#science in a nutshell is fuck around and find out

[sardonyxie]

Attack on Day Camp: Levi Squad HCs

Levi

His name? Bleach. (Windex or Lysol were runner-ups)

Has seen it all, doesn't know why he still comes back every summer. He just loves the kids too much and the pay is way too good now that it’s been years since he’s been working there.

Has those "u gonna tell the truth right fucking now" and "don't mess with me brat, I know whatchu did" eyes. It works everytime.

Either has the oldest or the youngest kids, no middle ground.

Gets away with the potty mouth because it's "part of his character". The kids love it. He can also persuade them to do pretty much whatever he’s planned just by telling them it looks cool or like something he’d do. 

Gets shipped with Petra by the kids. He actually got married to her as part of a wedding themed day. They kept their ring and are often paired as a couple for other skits, themed events or days.

Eld

Chose the name "Tonic" (Rhum or Tequila weren't G rated enough apparently)

Carries a ukulele around and annoys the shit out of people during bus rides on weekly out-of-site activities.

Knows all the songs and is good at using efficient attention grabbers.

Has funny anecdotes kids love to hear.

Improv expert: put him in a skit on the spot and he'll manage to make it 10x better.

Has no patience for lazy co-workers who don't contribute to the team and make no efforts. He calls them out on the spot even if he gets reprimanded for it.

Gunther

Codename: Astroboi (yup, written like that. He chose the name years ago and the others do not let him get away with a "y" at the end.)

When he got out of his shell, people were mesmerized at his abilities and he was nicknamed "Summer's Revelation" as a result.

Prefers the "middle" kids: he can do things he cannot do with the younger ones and he can still makeup stories, unlike with the older kids.

Alwaaaaays paired with Eld group-wise, they're like the magic combo nobody wants to break-up.

Ace of planification, he's always chosen to plan Fridays' Special Game and can plan every group's itinerary for said event.

While he'd never show it in front of the campers, he has favourite kids and isn't even ashamed of it.

Oruo

Named Mini-me.

Always gets hurt somehow on the job. He doesn't even question the bruises and scratches at this point.

10/10 for the costumes and for the acting skills. The younger kids giggle a lot to his antics, and the older ones like his sarcastic lines.

Organizes on the spot events: he often tours the neighbourhood for playgrounds with his group and finds cool secret spots to chill and play with his kiddos.

Will throw hands for his group, your camper better not mess with one of his.

He's a weird co-worker newbies often come at for being himself, but the vets are quick to put them in their places. The team likes his quirks.

Petra

She's called Rocky and people take a double take when they see her answer to the name. (It’s mainly for her love of ice cream)

Can re-plan an entire schedule of activities that don't make sense (newbies am I right?) and weren't thought of well enough in 5 minutes.

Schedules all sorts of activities for her group including arts and crafts, science, reading periods, and sports. Everyone gets to do something they like!

She's great with all the groups, but she is the resident Kindergarteners' mom™️. She's super observant and quickly notice issues needing to be addressed during weekly meetings and already has suggestions for improvements.

She's a master at The Killing Game* and often is appart of the last people to be killed. Creates alliances with Levi, Mike, Nifa, and the newbies but it's only to backstab them in the end cause she's that bish who wants the vets to win

Was once seen outside job hours on a date with Levi by some of the older kids and they keep on asking her about details on their relationship. Petra gets bashful and blushes like crazy to Levi's amusement.

I was thinking of day camp and how my used-to-be colleagues were coping with the incredible change of staff that occurred this year. At least no one tried to pick Oreo, my day camp name for 8 years, as their own (I would’ve thrown a fit ahah!)

* In a nutshell, The Killing Game is a game in which everyone randomly picks the name of a co-worker and needs to "kill" their victim. Once you kill your victim, you take their target and continue so until you get killed, or you win. A safe word is established beforehand to save your allies and to make the game more complex. It’s stressful and super fun! 

[kendrixtermina]

Appreciating the Range of Type 6, or, one stereotypical example, and three that aren’t.

I want to tell you about some type 6 ppl that I know in my personal life.

Exemplar #1: F. B.

Complete Stats

Wing: 5 p or cp: largely phobic – lots of safety worries, outright authoritarian follower personality Instinct: sp/soc Trifix: 613  - 6w5 1w2 3w2 (“The Taskmaster” or “The Middle Manager”) jungian: ISTJ / SLI-Te oldham: Conscientious & Aggressive Essence Type: Mars Temperament: Pure Choleric

What he’s like:

Not pleasant.

Every “strict conservative middle aged guy” stereotype in the book. Control freak, makes a mountain out of every molehill, sees the world as full of axe murderers, judgemental as fuck, horrible temper and yet completely impersonable, all his opinions are copypasted from right-wing news sites. When they say war is good he’s for war, and when they say war is bad he’ll be like “At least Trump did not start any more wars” without perceiving a contradiction. Despite this, he believes is very hot, principled and funny. He is none of these things. He puts people down nonstop. My knowledge of neurochemistry tells me that he must have emotions somewhere or he couldn’t function, but I ain’t ever seen a single one of those emotions. They’re all for his job and a few trusted mentor figures. And his mom. At least he loved her.

If you say anything he doesn’t like, he “throws the sofa out the window” as his wife once put it.

How he’s a Type 6:

Well, he’s pretty much every negative stereotype in a nutshell… other than distrusting his partner. But that might be cause hes sx blind, or cause the wife is big on monogamy & wouldn’t ever cheat.

The one positive trait of 6 that he has is that he does his research. Before moving anywhere he googles the crime rates and if you need a doctor he might find you the best one. But even that can be overriden by ideology (hydroxychloroquine!). And if you don’t take his exact advice, there goes the sofa out the window again…

And I guess the work ethic from all 3 parts of the trifix really comes through – he hasn’t had a single bad grade in his life and always keeps collecting new certifications, and will make sure you hear about it...

Exemplar #2: I.

Complete Stats

Wing: 5 P or cp: pretty much an even mix of phobic and counterphobic Instinct: sp/soc Trifix: 614 - 6w5 1w2 4w3 (Would prolly call herself “The Big Pain” rather than “The Philosopher” ^^°) jungian: INTJ / ILI-Ni oldham: Serious & Conscientious Essence Type: Saturn Temperament: Chlor-Mel

What she’s like:

I’d describe her as serious, mature, discerning, focused and passionate about her friendships, if perhaps somewhat forceful at times, with a dry, sarcastic sense of humor.

Comes across like someone who knows what she’s talking about, with well-articulated points.

Often the Responsible Sibling, Designated Sanity Checker or Bullshit Detector.

Prefers to plan everything in advance in typical Ni dom fashion, even amusement part trips. Gets somewhat anxious without a future plan or shedule.

Often mistaken for a whole lot more sociable and confident that she really feels inside. (even I kinda bought it and got her whole darn trifix wrong on my first typing attempt, though that was when I was new to typology) She can act the boss act temporarily to get the situation over with, but she actually hates making decisions.

She does however have the occasional cute/pure moment where that lower function block comes out.

How she’s a Type 6:

She has saved our family from many a terrible restaurant by making sure to check the reviews. The preparing for all possible dangers is very 6, the acting tough outwardly when youre inwardly anxious, the intellectual problem solving & some tendency towards organization/responsibility/ “logistic” intelligence.

One online test she took gave her 5w6 instead of 6w5 but that’s probably just the ITxx-ness leaking in. I remember this one time we were discussing this artsy-fartsy theater play to which we’d had fascinatingly different reactions, and at one point I half-jokingly said something like “But does anyone ever really feel connected to others, or is that a myth?” to which she wrote, “[Name], what the fuck? Yes I do.” and then immediately deleted it. That’s more of a 6 reaction innit?

Nonetheless the wing does feature in significantly – for example she got very well informed about a lot of topics because she researched them to assuage a random survival-related fear, like, “How to make sure I have enough retirement money”

Exemplar #3: M.

Complete Stats

Wing: 7 p or cp: largely phobic Instinct: sp/sx Trifix: 692 - 6w7 9w1 2w1 (Fortunately very much a “Good Samaritan” rather than “The Stockholm”) jungian: ISFP / SEI-Fi oldham: Sensitive & Devoted Essence Type: Lunar-Venus Temperament: Pure Supine

What she’s like:

Precious! Sweet, nice, good listener, friendly, gives all the best gifts. But also perceptive and good at understanding people, eg. mediating to the parents when one of the younger sisters is having An Emotion™ or winning the trust of problem children.

Unlike I. Who has some soc that helps her keep track of a larger circle of friends despite her introversion, M. tends to enjoy the closeness with her family and have just a few very close friends. Excellent friend material all around! The sx and Se also come out in enjoying art forms involving the body like theatre or dance.

She can be a bit shy, conflict-avoidant and occasionally a lil bit panicky though.

As a small kid she used to be super duper shy but then a wise english teacher encouraged her to play a big role in a play, and since then she’s a lot more confident and doesn’t let ppl push her around without limit, though she’s still a quiet, helpful person. There you see the difference that a good teacher can make.

How she’s a Type 6:

For one thing she moves and emotes faster than a core 9 would, and she fits the body language – big eyes that move around a lot, stands a bit lopsided, talks in a shrill voice on the rare occasions where we exhaust her patience etc. As a xSFx and a w7 she shows mostly the “warm, friendly, likeable” side of type 6. She also has a very 6-ish tendency to very frequently ask people’s opinions & feedback before making decisions. (the other fixes probably add to this)

Alas, she also has a little bit of of the fear/insecurity.

Also she has a social/care job which might be seen as 6-ish desire to serve the community.

Exemplar #4: J.

Complete Stats

Wing: 7 P or cp: largely counterphobic Instinct: sx/soc ?? definitely not sp first. Trifix: 638 - 6w7 3w4 8w9(?) (Shall she be a “Justice Fighter” or a “Kyle”? Only time will tell.) jungian: ISTP / LSI-Se ?? Oldham: ? some Dramatic & Serious, perhaps ? Essence Type: Definitely Mercury Temperament: San-Mel

What she’s like:

The first adjective that usually comes to my mind is ‘cool’. Sassy, energetic & a little bit tough, but also affectionate when she wants to be. (though in admiring way rather than a mushy one)

She says the coolest things, has a certain sly sort of cleverness, and an astonishly good poker face. Bit of an occasional prankster. Hilarious. Knows all sort of cool science facts. Avid gamer. 

Not especially popular or over the top sociable, but she gets sad if no one pays attention to her a while. Will act visibly moody where ppl can see sad or worried and can catastrophize a bit in such situations.

How she’s a Type 6:

I first though we might be getting an ExxP type 7 since she was a pretty energetic child, but once puberty hit and independent thought manifested, she turned out a whole lot too reactive and ‘edgy’ for this, and more on the ‘moderate introvert’ side of things.

Since then the sisterly dynamic has been like one fluffy golden dog and 3 hissing black cats. Hissing Cats #1 and #2 are very proud of her, but cat #1 was forced to conclude that she’s probably not a positive outlook type.

Out of all the reactive types 6 fits best because she does broadcast group identity (like wearing merchandise of her favorite media and wearing buttons in solidarity with ppl she likes.) & has a big case of Big Sibling worship for M, I, and someone else who isn’t on this list due to being a 9. (a 4 or 8 might like their older siblings but probably wouldn’t constantly stress the admiration.), but she can also show lasting, pouty displeasure with authority figures who have slighted her. (Like that one time I went too far in teasing her...)

I’m just assuming the 8 fix because that tends to make 6s more bold, louder & more shameless.

Basically she is the “punk teen” type of 6. She can be a bit dramatic & over-the top but still come to her family on advice (even advice on pranks!) in ways that xSTPs of other enneagrams prolly wouldn’t.

She also tends to use self-deprecating humor in tough situations and deflects compliments to present herself as ‘ordinary’.

...

This may sound like I’m really getting down on my first example (I won’t pretend that I’m not) but the point in bringing him up is that the reason he’s like this is: He was subject to really bad parenting that put a lot of fear into him, there was no good parenting to teach him broader coping strategies, he lived in a crappy environment that crushed his dreams, in a sense ‘confirming’ those fears and making him double down, resulting in a person who is just always rigidly following the same predictable pattern or jumping from one automatic reaction to the next with very little pausing and thinking. That goes for the other types too: A ‘stereotypical’ person is a desperate person ruled by fear, who cant stop or soften up even for an instant cause they constantly feel this fire of threat under their arse.

A lot of descriptions say that 6s ‘Follow authority’ but most would balk at the notion – ‘I do the research!’ they might argue ‘I don’t just trust anyone’ or ‘I’m actually a rebel’. There is of course such a thing as denial  that’s more like the extreme case.

But with a more average, functional 6 it’s not so much ‘obedience’ as that they just like to bounce their ideas off of others to get feedback, or that they feature in other’s viewpoints. So you might get someone who can naturally use feedback (something other ppl may have to learn first) or who is very considerate of others (which others might have to consciously remind themselves to do.)

Those are sometimes pretty good traits actually.

On the other hand this is probably part of what makes decisions hard cause they consider all these possible scenarios of how things might displease or cause harm to everyone involved.

Being able to naturally snap into Action Mode under stress looks a bit enviable from the outside, but I. assures me that it’s actually super stressful & exhausting, even for someone who doesn’t get to a point of just being unreasonably aggro at you.

Though even an extreme case like F.B. would probably claim that he ‘did the research’ even as he’s 1:1 quoting the Pope at you, and then saying that you ‘have to be respectful’ even if you don’t even believe in Christianity. Hence why you get a lot of authoritarians talking about “disrespect”. You didn’t “fail to obey”, you “disrespected the flag” or  “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people”. Because they’re still trying or inwardly thinking that they’re doing the consideritation & considering other’s PoV thing when they’ve long since crossed from respect and consideration into mindless obedience, all while still thinking that they’re very sceptical and discerning cause after all they really distrust the other political party or whatever.  

In a way you get this obsession with ‘mind control’ cause they’re not unaware of & very much looking to guard the blind spot. They’re adults trying to do adult things.

For example, if I voiced an opinion to F. B. which he didn’t like, his reaction was often to ask “who told you that”

That’s just how he seems to think opinions work, somebody tells them to you.

Makes one wonder how he thinks new opinions start.

Yeah - Nobody told me that. I concocted it myself in some corner of my head. And in the interest of objectivity, I should stress that you can also end talking out of your ass that way, if you’re not basing it on enough outside data. Making up new shit has more of a quadratic than a linear learning curve – at least with copying you get something semi-useful right away. In making up your own you might be really off a long time before you stumble on something useful.

Also, I was young at the time and it’s not wholly unreasobale to think that an inexperienced person might be duped. I reacted really badly in part cause he hit my own ego buttons cause I was of course proud of this epiphany that I had concocted by myself, and now he says (or so I perceived it, being sensitive to accusations of incompetence) that I’m too dumb to form an opinion, so of course I launched into full Obnoxious Reddit Dude Mode.

In I. It manifests more on a reasonable useful level like “Oh wait, should [young cousin] be on TikTok? I don’t want him to get sucked into some cultish BS.” which is at least something the parents should have on the radar/ warn him about even if they do let him use TikTok, because for all that it is vital for him to get his experience with independent socializing & experimentig with sel-presentation, people do sometimes get suckered into cults or goaded into unsafe tests of courage.

And in a sense… maybe they overamphasize it but to some extent they’re also simply consciously aware/ mindful of it. The rest of us are not immune to propaganda after all, solong as it’s presented in a way pleasing to our egos. Any type structure can become a ‘hook’ if you’re not careful.

[electrozeistyking]

ZIMVOID KING ARC - Headcanons and Facts for the AU

So! I spent a few days working on headcanons and facts about my Invader Zim AU, the Zimvoid King ARC (or ZKA for short). All written along side of installment three, "Dark Claws of a King", and now here on the net to burn your eyeballs, here's the master post on the ZKA facts and ideas I've recently spawned for the AU. Enjoy!

if you manage to read this all, you’re a certified creature

   ~   ZIB RELATED    ~ Facts that mainly surround the cockroach (and i'm pretty sure the majority of this post mentions this guy).

-Zib has fobidden himself to go on any adventures involving Zim. He's decided that it's not his place to try to stop a version of the Irken that is not his own. Plus, he's a merger. (This is all just nonsense he tells himself. The real reason is that he doesn't want to get involved with that shit all over again. PTSD and stuff, yanno?)

-Zib has a real problem with keeping his hands from doing things. He's actually gotten a Rubrix Cube to keep his hands occupied, and he keeps the cube in one of his pockets at all times in case he needs it. It's probably due to a deep, insatiable urge he has to build, build, build; creating his mech, modifying Voot Cruisers and such... once he'd had nothing else to make, he'd been left with an itch in his hands.

-Zib can also be seen tinkering with some forgotten technology Professor Membrane has laying around. The professor has actually only caught Zib doing this once; the roach had almost finished with an invention Membrane was only preparing to start working on.

-Zib's senses are all heightened and improved. His eyesight has never been more perfect, his hearing (despite his obvious lack of ears) has never been clearer, and though he regrets having it, he does happen to have a perfect sense of smell. So he knows if something stinks, it fucking reeks. Ugh. Awful, dude.

-Sometimes Dib will be like "Oh, lookit us, we're a couple of Dibs, ain't that cool" and then Zib does something very Zim-like and he goes "Fuck, I totally forgot he does that".

   ~   PAK!ZIM RELATED   ~ Facts that mainly surround PAK!Zim.

-Zib and PAK!Zim occasionally do something I like to call "syncing", where the two act and think as one entity, one mind instead of two. When synced, these two can be caught using terms like "us" and "we". Neither of them knows how this works, but I like to think it's like fusing in Steven Universe, minus the dancing and stuff; any distruptions to their sync (like if one of them really doesn't like something), they become two minds opposed to one again.

I like to think this is syncing in a nutshell:

   ZIB: We'd love to!    DIB: We?    ZIB: aw shit    P!ZIM: nice going genius

Zib finds syncing to be very relaxing. PAK!Zim likes how powerful syncing feels, even if he won't provide a comment on it.

-These two may have overcome their differences (well, were forced to), but Zib and PAK!Zim are still a Zim and Dib duo. From time to time, their little playful fighting turns into a real spat, and in the Zimvoid, it always hurt Zib whenever PAK!Zim tried to pull the silent treatment on the bug boy.

-PAK!Zim still occasionally threatens Zib that he may dig one of his PAK legs into the roach child's shoulders again. He feels too weirdly guilty about doing it the first time (as mentioned in the first installment of ZKA, "King of a Barren World"), so he'll never actually do it... but Zib doesn't know that.

-PAK!Zim calls Zib "stinkbug", since I thought that was more fitting, as people do call him a roach (this is especially true for me). He's a little cockroach.

-PAK!Zim can only talk in Zib's head. Zib once wondered if PAK!Zim's voice is real, or if it's false. He quickly remembered that inner voices you typically have in your head cannot change volume. PAK!Zim can yell, and it gives Zib headaches and nosebleeds every time he does. PAK!Zim often tries not to yell when the duo are around other people; both are worried if people would think the PAK is ruining his head, and they don't want to know what could happen.

-PAK!Zim has terrible eyesight. And by that, I mean he can't see. The only time he can see anything is when he and Zib are synced. Neither of them really mind it, but they always try to avoid syncing when Zib's showering. Despite how comfortable they are with each other when synced, that is the only discomfort both of them have. They just... I dunno, I'm kinda getting uncomfortable about it myself.

-Zib finds himself to be weirdly possessive over PAK!Zim. Maybe it's because that he sees the sentient robotic backpack to be an anchor for him when shit's getting tough. Having had four years to get over their differences, Zib has actually befriended the PAK and doesn't know what he would have done without someone to talk to all that time.

-To branch off that last one, I have the firm belief that because of Zib's weird attachment to the PAK fused to the back of his head, Zib would probably cease to function if PAK!Zim is ever removed. Ever since PAK!Zim officially woke up, Zib has developed this seemingly comfortable, permanent sense of knowing that someone is there for him, will always be there and they're not going to leave him alone because guess what? PAK!Zim has no choice but to go wherever Zib goes. He occasionally forgets that, though.

The idea of having the PAK (his PAK) removed terrifies him; you'd be tearing that feeling of never truly being lonely away from him. Removing the PAK would remove his buddy, his pal, his Zim. He'd be lost, confused, alone, and he'd have no idea what to do. It's just him by himself all over again, no one else. Plus, who knows what else could happen to Zib? What if it turned out he relied on the PAK to survive, and removing it could potientially kill him? Neither PAK!Zim or Zib are willing to see what could happen.

TL;DR: Take away the PAK, and Zib gets crippling depression and he might die.

-Though he can't see, PAK!Zim can hear pretty damn well (even if he barely listens half the time).

-No one else knows that PAK!Zim is alive. Dib wants the PAK removed because he thinks that if they remove it, Zib's thoughts will stop being so... "corrupted". In his own mind's eye, Dib thinks that if they remove the PAK, it'll be helping Zib, but what he doesn't realize it would absolutely DESTROY Zib's mentality.

   ~   FAMILY RELATED   ~ Facts that involve the Membrane family as a whole.

-The fact that his other son has claws perplexes Professor Membrane to no end. He pretty much tried to see if he could study Zib's weird claws once he found out about them. So far, what he's found out from his studies is that Zib's claws are really fucking sharp and they really hurt (mentioned in installment three of ZKA, "Dark Claws of a King").

-More facts on the stinkbug because yes, Zib has another huge problem: it turns out rants from his "brother" Dib helps Zib conk right the fuck out. It unfortunately works every time.

-Zib, Dib and Gaz just... they kinda see themselves as siblings, even though Zib and Dib are just alternate versions of one another. After a while, they kinda got over it and now it's just:

"This is my brother! I have a brother! We're brothers! We're practically twins! See this? This guy right here? Him? That's <my> brother. I love my brother, and I'll kick your fucking ass into the goddamn dirt if you insult him in front of me." (this is all just from zib btw.)

   ~   GOOFY   ~ Facts that are INTENDED to be goofy.

-For whatever reason, I enjoy the idea of Zib having a weird addiction to eating sticks of butter. Yes, his new family decides to have an intervention about Zib's addiction, but it totally fuckin' flops, so they end up having to try to hide the butter and cut him off from it instead. (they gave up trying when it all disappeared from its hiding spot later that very same day.)

   ~   IDK FACTS   ~ Facts that I've no clue where they should go.

-On Keef in ZKA: the little red head has actually mellowed out now that he's a teen. He still adores his friends, but he's calmer, not as clingy, and is an excellent listener, so he'll let Zib ramble, but will occasionally interrupt to ask questions. He's like Zib's mini therapist.

-I like the idea of Keef being bisexual.

   ~   AUTHOR TRIVIA   ~ Trivia from the author that you totally won't need but may find interesting anyway! why was i speaking in third person—

-"King of a Barren World" was posted on the fifteenth of May, but Archive kinda fucked up and it says I published it on the sixteenth.

-You'll see me call Professor Membrane "the professor", but only because I totally forgot he's a scientist. Not sure how, because his schtick is REAL SCIENCE, but—

-This AU was made by accident. And by that, I thought up a scenario, wrote about it, thought up another scenario and wrote about that one too, and then found out people actually liked this nonsense I was writing, so it's an AU now and forever -or at least until I die-.

-The Zimvoid King ARC is not a real arc. I just thought the name sounded cool.

-Before anyone asks "what does ARC stand for", it doesn't stand for anything. I just capslocked the word arc because I just thought that looked cool.

-I accidentally made a Discord server for ZKA.

-Speakin' of accidents, I may have accidentally started shipping Keef and Zib. Oops?

-I really like calling Zib a stinkbug. As user MelodyoftheVoid once put it: Half man, half bug, all stink.

-I have strictly forbidden myself from making Zib's hair-scythes antennae. I love headcanons on them being antennae, sure... but I decided that I'd have no idea how to write them in ZKA, so I was like "Nah, dog".

-Of all my IZ AUs, ZKA is the one I haven't dropped yet. Maybe because it's only four days old at this point, but still. omigosh zka is a baby au :0

[excorcismic]

you ever have that one muse that’s just like . . . no matter how many characters you play , not matter how much time goes by , you will never get sick of writing that muse & they’re such a huge comfort character and mean the world to you ?? YES , that’s me with miss zelda here . i . . . love zelda ( the character and the series ) with every fiber of my being and after a lot of debate i finally decided i’d bring her here !! i’m doing leon’s intro next and will try to get to replies ( want to get down zel’s intro soon but i’d like to plot things first ) afterwards but pls pls pls here’s a detailed plotting call for my princess !! pls like / react if you’re interested - or let me know if we’re already plotting !!

IN A CANON NUTSHELL : so this zelda is the princess from the masterpiece known as breath of the wild - one hundred years before the events of the game , she was kind of the ‘leader’ of the champions , a group of people who were tasked to aid in protecting hyrule once calamity ganon rose again . link , who was also a champion , was assigned as her personal knight - in the beginning . . . she did not like him for the fact that he seemed to have everything under control and she didn’t . why ?? well , zelda , from birth , was told she had to unlock a power in herself that would potentially save hyrule from the calamity , and for some reason , no matter how hard she tried , she couldn’t do it . and she was mad at herself for feeling like a failure when she was put under an intense amount of pressure from her father & the prophecy - even called the heir to a throne of nothing because of how no results came from her ceaseless prayers . EVENTUALLY , her powers would reveal themselves . . . but only after the calamity arrived , all of the champions had been downed ( save for link , on the verge of death ) , and all seemed lost . but she would use her power to protect hyrule & keep the calamity contained inside hyrule castle until link would awaken and finish him off .

IN AN ALUCARD NUTSHELL : so zelda . daughter of a preacher ( father ) & a lawyer ( mother , now deceased ) , always expected to be the picture perfect child hence why she never got much of a chance to have a break from endless studying & extra things . she’s always been a straight-a student , has done fencing since she was a child , trilingual in english spanish & mandarin chinese , now a star college student majoring in biology ( her own choice , because she loves science ) and minoring in law ( because her father wants her to be a lawyer like her mother & she uhh hates it ! ) she’s seen as ‘little miss perfect’ because she can do so much and never seems to do any wrong but zelda is uhhh sick of that and is actually now trying to rebel against her father and throw herself into trouble . since lowkey all of this shit is killing her and she wants to breathe freely . she’s trying to do what she wants to do hence why she’s majoring in bio instead of law , working at the local florist instead of taking a law internship , actually trying to pursue a social life outside of the people her dad approves of . that stuff . she’s basically a genius who wants to say ‘fuck u’ to the people telling her what to do and go on her own path and i think that’s sexy .

BUT OHHHHHHHHHH YOU WANNA PLOT WITH ZELDA SO BAD OHHHHHHH

so zelda . given her situation ?? there is so much to work with . lemme spout off these ideas bc i’m so fucking excited .

firstly - people who know about her little miss perfect reputation and either dislike her or are intimidated by her for it . zelda isn’t a snob in the slightest but with someone who does as much as she does it’s only natural to assume she is . but she isn’t , i promise ; she hates that being her epithet .

kind of building off the idea of people knowing abt her whole ‘lmp’ thing - i’d love some folks who actually entertain zelda’s desires to break away from that and take her out to do rebellious shit or something like that !! because zelda wants to get the fuck out she hates it here .

some who encourage her and some who do the opposite - ‘you can do it, don’t be scared’ vs. ‘you really don’t belong here so go back to your books and pencils’

maybe ppl who hold zelda to some sort of pedestal bc of her reputation ?? which is equally as bad to her - she’s lowkey crumbling under all these expectations and she’s amazing but to be seen as someone . . . above other people , she doesn’t like that at all .

also those folks who in any grade of school rly have tried to exploit her need to get good grades & genius to their advantage aka if i pair up with the smart kid we’ll get an a guaranteed . can be anywhere - could’ve been in the past or could be now . 

CLASSMATES in general . from elementary , middle school , high school for the past , and now college classmates .

study buddies !! study buddies that zelda either vibes with immensely in terms of how she works or butts heads with them . her way of thinking is both incredibly organized but also all over the place . she can be either very easy or difficult to work with .

gimme some school rivals or equals aka ppl that zelda’s on par with in terms of intellect/grades and either they fucking hate each other or make a pretty good team . maybe both ! put the smart ppl in a room together and see what happens .

also want to clarify this can be on both the bio or law side for any of these college-based connections bc zelda is taking both she’s just . way more passionate about biology than she is law .

OLD FENCING TEAMMATES OR RIVALS PLEASE yes she is still fencing to this day and she’s awesome at it . she’s got a shitton of medals and she actually likes it but it’s another thing that was forced upon her since she was young .

her dad is a local preacher so by nature she’s always expected to be at church so ppl who know her as the preacher’s daughter/from church bc imma keep it real zelda ain’t that enthused abt that religion either but again . once again have to fill father’s expectations . one day tho she’s just gonna stop showing up .

i’d like maybe a social circle who zelda’s father approves of ?? like , friends who zelda has but they’re more so just bc that’s what mr. king wanted . i’d also like a partner/ex-partner to fit this description aka zelda’s not rly that into it or was into it bc it was again . kinda just ‘i’m just dating you bc my dad approves of you’ kinda deal and maybe she tried but overall . didn’t/doesn’t work .

i also , though , like the idea of a social circle who zelda’s father would never approve of and she hangs w/ them bc maybe she likes them or maybe she also just wants to prove a point . maybe she dated someone for this reason too - just the whole spectrum of ‘what dad wants vs. what dad wasn’t’ bc pissing off her dad is kind of a major goal at this point .

so maybe regular customers of the flower shop she works at - she just . zelda rly loves flowers & nature ( and again science as a whole , especially life science hence biology ) and she can go off on so many tangent about flowers please talk to her about flowers . maybe even bring her some flowers too jk unless

i’d rly find it awesome if zelda had some ppl who maybe liked her enough to follow her when she goes out just studying things and listen to her bc she loves to talk about her passions - she likes taking hikes and trips out into nature or the botanical gardens and stuff like that to do studies / experiments of her own . she likes museums , gardens , the outdoors - zelda loves knowledge and learning about things and if someone just kept her company while she did so that’d be awesome .

i’m a sucker for canon parallels with non-canon characters so . maybe a relationship that doesn’t rly have any specificity in what portion of zelda’s life ( school , father approved social circle , father disapproved social circle , night life etc etc ) but mirrors her relationship with link in breath of the wild - for whatever reason , zelda and this other character are around each other very frequently and the beginning for some reason she is very put off by it but then comes around and eventually this muse , they become extremely closer with her and important to her . in any way !! idk if it’s platonic or romantic but , in rps like this that’s lowkey my jam but it works the best with miss zelda

AS ALWAYS - friends ! enemies !  former crushes ! exes ! gimme anything and all !! the princess of hyrule is AT YOUR SERVICE and i’m so excited to write her . i love her .

and now . . . onto leon’s intro i hopefully go .

[lokilickedme]

(Okay, I’m going to do this in probably 3 parts because it’s long)

So The Department sorta happened because I wanted to get back into a regular weekly-updating online fic because, frankly, two reasons:

1) I’m worn out/exhausted/a bit burned out from working on novels and very little of anything else for the last year and a half, and

2) I crave/need the instant validation of the comment section at AO3, which you don’t get when you write a book :/

So I called a break, put away my manuscripts for a couple months, and am just indulging in some fun writing for a little while.  And since I wanted something new (sorry WIPs, your time will come again) this is what we ended up with.

I don’t remember exactly what made me go with the police department premise.  The potential for assholery and rampant egomania, most likely?  Well, you know I love that shit when it hides something slightly more noble underneath...and I think I wanted a big ensemble cast because I just adore the dynamics that can occur in groups of disparate personalities who have known each other for a long time.  That way they interact when they know each others’ secrets and there’s that one person new to the group who isn’t in on any of the jokes?  Good stuff right there.

I do remember that the first ideas for this story came to me during the Professor Jeff’s Super Science Show at the library (yeah your guess is as good as mine on that but it happens literally every time).  But if I’m being honest, I’d say it probably had more to do with Benny Hill than anything.  I have this bad habit of sitting on the couch with my laptop on my knees, headphones on, head back, inventing scenes in my head that go along with whatever music I’m listening to.  I’ve got this one insane playlist full of goofy tunes my 7-year old has requested for staging Thomas The Tank Engine crash scenes (don’t ask) and on this particular night that’s what I was listening to because why not.  On that playlist is a 30-minute loop of the Benny Hill Theme.  And all I could see in my head was a foot chase on ice and snow between a female officer, an out of shape Chief of police, a giraffe-legged office assistant, and a probably methed-up wannabe criminal who didn’t actually do anything major but was running anyway because he was bored.  It struck me funny and I toyed with the idea of sticking it into something I already had started, because I do love me some chaotic slapstick.

So the next day I’m driving the boys home from the Super Science Show and I’ve been playing around with it in my head again, and it’s taking shape into something that I know I’m going to have to work with.  We pass the Pupuseria Virolena Salvadoran restaurant downtown, and I start laughing because I’m suddenly hearing David Tennant trying to say that in his Scottish accent.

On the spot I named him Hawk and made him Captain.  And now we have one of our characters, and by the time we pull up in our driveway ten minutes later I’ve got stuff needing to be written down right now.

(the rest is under the cut for length)

Chapter 1 - Prologue - Your Boatload of Bad Decisions Has Left The Harbor

I was so anxious to get into the story but it needed an introduction, or else Greta being in this podunk town wouldn’t have any weight.  So we’re introduced to our heroine, who isn’t so much a heroine as just a decent if slightly too self confident special division officer who had some bad luck.  It’s not elaborated on yet in the story, though it’s heavily referenced multiple times that she disobeyed an order and made the decision to continue a high speed pursuit that had been called off by her superior officer, the above-mentioned Captain Hawkins, whom Greta has something of a relationship with (yeah they’re screwing, what of it).  And in the wake of that decision, Greta’s partner is killed and she’s brought up on charges, suspended, ordered to counseling, and finally shipped off to a small town in Minnesota so she can keep working while her final fate is decided by an investigative committee back in LA.

The opening chase scene was written from things I learned when I was a kid and my dad did vehicle tweaks for the Fort Worth police department from his auto shop.  The officers used to hang out drinking Cokes and telling stories while dad made (possibly illegal) modifications to their cars.  I was there a lot, sitting under his work bench with my books and pencils, listening to everything and remembering it all.  And I thought it was so damn cool.  So here we are.  What else was I gonna do with that information?  Might as well put it to use if it’s gonna be taking up real estate in my head for all these years.

For the record, I really liked Greta’s partner Joe and hated to kill him - but we needed a catalyst, and the cheerful best friend who sings Italian arias during chases while joyfully blasting out windshields is always gonna be the loser in the goner lottery.  For once the male hero dies to further the female lead’s storyline.

Heh, take that Marvel.

Anyway, sorry Joe.  There will be more about you in later chapters, so...gone but not forgotten.

Chapter 2 - Minnewhatever

This part starts out with the last bit of backstory we need to proceed.  Hawk sending Greta off to Minnesota, a place whose name she never does remember or say correctly.  She doesn’t figure she’s actually going to be there long enough to bother learning it, but Hawk informs her that her exile is likely to last at least a year, and he gives her very little reassurance that she won’t be serving every minute of her sentence.

Greta’s feeling a little betrayed here.  She and Hawk have been sort of a thing for a while, friends and colleagues and lovers, but he’s washing his hands of the entire situation and she’s left angry and a bit bereft.  But she still figures he’ll do something to get her out of it, if she’s patient and behaves herself in the new place.

Fast forward to day one in Weemeetwa.  While drowning her aggravation in a bottle of the good stuff, Greta meets her first new acquaintance and decides to just go with the cranky fuck-it attitude that she’s been harboring since the incident, gets shitfaced, and goes home with the guy.  This might have been a dual-purpose shag; Greta’s still feeling betrayed and abandoned by Hawk, so it’s a screw-you that he’ll never find out about - but that doesn’t stop it from feeling good in a vengeful sort of way.  Plus it’s cold and she’s alone and the guy - Andy, a tall sweet longhaired cutiepie with an Irish accent - is all too willing to buy her a drink and take her home for some cuddles.

In the morning Greta wakes up in a strange place full of groaning regret and ends up giving Andy a ride to the station.  She doesn’t count on seeing him again, so there’s no breath wasted on goodbyes.

Chapter 3 -  A Logging Truck, A Mountain, and A Blonde Walk Into A Bar

Now we meet most of the department.  Creeley, a gruff roughhouser with a rude streak forty miles wide, Sarah, the only other female in the department and possibly the only person alive who can keep the boys under control, Kevin, the quiet dispatch agent with an impressive mountain impersonation skill, and finally (for the moment) Chief, the slightly too good-looking and highly put-upon boss of them all.

I knew I wanted Tom Hiddleston to play Chief Tommy Davis.  This is Kong Skull Island-era Hiddleston crossed with The Night Manager, with a handful of extra pounds around the middle and a frustrated sigh that goes on forever.  He’s meant to be an ex hockey player who was waylaid on his way to the major leagues, so he’s strong and sturdy, but an injury benched him years ago and a career in small-town law enforcement has put him a bit to pasture.  Middle aged, somewhere between 40 and 45.  He’s got some stuff in his past but he’s happy now, for the most part, just living his life watching over the town.

Jason Momoa is Bobby Creeley, for obvious reasons.  I knew I wanted a rowdy, rude, loudmouthed team member that’s always crossing everyone, but who everyone knows will be there no matter what if anything goes down.  He’s instantly Greta’s nemesis from the moment she walks in the door.  Gigantic and shaggy with a permanently amused nature and a fear of literally nothing, he’s simultaneously everyone’s best friend and worst enemy.

Sarah Lancashire has been finding her way into a lot of my fics lately as side characters, so it’s no surprise she ended up here as Sarah Pearl.  Steely, tough, and highly immune to the idiocy around her, Sarah is the worn out voice of common sense that the department is running perilously short on.  She’s also my first and foremost girl crush, and I’ll admit right now that I wrote an AU ending almost immediately that involved Sarah and Greta ending up together.  It would be natural to assume Sarah would fall into the default role of mom to the group, but there’s a whole lot of oh hell nope wrapped around that trope.  She would set them all on fire if anyone would let her have some matches, but Chief made a rule against that a long damn time ago.

Dave Bautista has been hanging around the back door of my muse stable for the longest, just minding his own business and waiting his turn, but I never really had any place to stick him.  Well Drax, your time has come baby.  I chose him to play Kevin Saylor based on his GoTG scene in which he tries to convince the crew he’s invisible.  And that’s Kevin, in a nutshell.  Huge and intimidating but quiet and intensely matter-of-fact in manner, he’s in charge of dispatch and immediately inspires Greta’s hatred of using the radio.

My first (and really only) faceclaim for Greta Morley was Zoe Saldana, but I waffled briefly for a couple of weeks, trying to cater to a few readers who told me they wanted to imagine themselves in the role.  I planned to stick with that, and I tried, I promise I did.  But every time Greta opened her mouth I heard Zoe, and by the time she went on her less than fleet-footed pursuit of Wilson with the longsuffering Andy by her side, she was locked in.  Greta’s harboring some serious regret and raw emotional wounds from her not too distant past, and some time out in the American Midwest should be a much needed recovery sabbatical.  Should be.  But isn’t gonna.

Speaking of Andy...Andrew Hozier-Byrne was and is the only person I ever considered for the role of Andy Burns.  Too tall, too clumsy, too cute, too sweet, just a whole bunch of too everything - he was perfect for the role and I may or may not have written it exclusively for him.  Okay yeah, I wrote it exclusively for him.  Andy’s the local cryptid, nobody really knows a lot about him.  He may or may not be a drug dealer.  He may or may not be officially employed by the police department.  He may or may not be Irish or hypoglycemic or a blackout drunk or as goofy as he seems.  Nobody really knows, and to be honest nobody really cares, because if you need it done Andy can do it...if he can remember you asked him to do it.

So Greta has arrived, for better or for worse.  Cree immediately starts in with the sexist remarks and butchering her name, a favor she returns by embarking on what will become a neverending trail of obliterated mis-renderings of the town’s name.  Creeley and Kevin kick off another of many running gags by arguing over whether or not anyone knew she was coming, and before things can get too stupid, Chief makes his first appearance.

And now things start to get interesting.

To be continued at chapter 4, Randy Andy and The Chief of Weemeetwa

@whatevervivie

[unimpressedperson]

The "Twenties" Trouble

Hey fam, look who is back in the house. And today on my TED talk, let's discuss a huge matter to me: The Twenties Trouble (hehe bad pun alert, but I'm gonna spill a whole lot of Ts here, mama).

First question usually pointed out, or not so usually considering it's the first time I use that expression: What is "The Twenties Trouble"? Well, plain and simple as a fucking waterfall crushing your skull with all the pressure, aging is easy. You live years goofing around, catching colds and bees, rolling and scratching your knee on dirty streets, but there is one gap of time where the gravity suddenly fails for you, making the pressure from a whole world fall straight on your back.

Ten years exactly, that's how long TTT endures, from your 20s to 30s. It sounds dumb if you never paid a thought to age, but for most human beings becoming an adult is hard. You spend 7.299 days being young, wild and free, but in the moment clock beats midnight at your 20th birthday, you are no longer a teenager and everyone suddenly expects you to mature, grows into a proper adult, with a 9 to 5 job, or a different work scale, but gaining a whole lot of money. They expect you to find someone, engage and marry that person, buy a house and plan a family there. Everything within those 10 years ahead.

Reaching my 20s scares me. What if I am not mature enough? What if everything I lived so far worths shit? What if everything I learned and all knowledge I acquired isn't enough? What if I never find a job good enough to provide me with a satisfactory life? What if only these 10 more years aren't enough? What if I don't succeed? What if...

Well, failure is my worst phobia. Dealing with consequences of not reaching success in determined situations makes me feel ill, and it doubles, not only doubles but multiplies to ten that fear when "succeeding" is attached to "life". Oh Ma'am, nauseous and lightheaded, NAUSEOUS AND LIGHTHEADED.

It's TTT in a nutshell. The fear of becoming a 30 years old after failing at succeeding during my twenties.

Continuing, however, part of that pressure we put on those 10 years between 20 and 30 doesn't fall on us by itself, an outside factor has to help you creating and pulling it up. Someone always makes you paranoid about aging by asking simple, yet treacherous questions:

"How is your job?"

"Where is your boyfriend/girlfriend?"

"You're 20 now. Congratulations, now you are an adult."

"How much do you earn monthly?"

"Do you plan in having kids?"

"What do you mean when you say you're not with someone?"

"Oh, you didn't begin the college, yet."

Usually these question comes from an aunt or uncle you only see during holidays. Or a highly successful person, which somehow got rich and peaked at her/his twenties.

I believe that concept of succeeding during your twenties began a few centuries ago. It was perfectly justified during XVII century, when people died of common diseases we now cure with vaccines or even regular pills (if you got a flu back in then, uuuh gurl, people already dug your trench, cuz the chances of survival were pretty low), but nowadays our life expectation is way above 40s. Why should we feel pressured into conquering, marrying, having kids and living everything by our 30s, if we are expected to die over forty years later?

It makes zero sense to make young people develop ulcers caused by stress, only because they are prioritizing aspects of their lives other than reproducing and functioning like automatic machines.

Science already proved that people evolve and matures in a different rhythm. Everyone has a characteristic way learning and growing process, because no one is the same. Evolution takes time and patience. You can't learn to play piano from day to night, the same goes to personal growth.

You are going to bloom someday, maybe during your twenties, or after them. Why to bother rushing processes and being unhappy? Comparing your nurture to someone else's won't make you any good, since no flower grows at the pace. Sunflowers takes two months to fully flourish, whilst daisies takes six months. Pouring up them with toxic substances may affect that growing process or even kill it.

We are not different. Toxic thoughts won't nurture or bloom us.

If you are 19 and afraid of 20s, inhale and exhale, discover yourself before diving in an "adult life" you are not ready to experience. At least that's what I repeat to myself everyday.

Another fact: maturity has no definitive formula or result. You can consider yourself someone mature even wearing your Star Wars socks and watching Steven Universe, cuz your clothing choices won't affect how you deal with problems or go through life's challenges. Also, facing struggles alone won't make you stronger, sharing is caring, so filling yourself with every single problem without venting will only turn you into a miserable person.

Although what everyone says, becoming an adult has nothing to do with getting miserable. Adulthood can be fun and good, as long as you live a healthy life, both body and psychologically.

The end... or is it?

P:S now have a few pictures from my "mature socks"

[automatismoateo]

In response to a question in a recent thread where someone asked me to go in-depth, here's a description of my experience in Education and teaching Science in Arkansas and why I finally quit. via /r/atheism

Submitted July 11, 2021 at 11:22PM by paxinfernum (Via reddit https://ift.tt/3ALPxPr) In response to a question in a recent thread where someone asked me to go in-depth, here's a description of my experience in Education and teaching Science in Arkansas and why I finally quit.

The only thing that matters

Here's something you need to understand first. In most rural districts, pretty much any idiot can get hired to a position and stay there as long as they don't piss off parents too much. The people hiring you don't really understand what you teach, and the parents don't understand or care what quality teaching is, but they care if you say something that offends their backward sensibilities. What that effectively means is that your ability to teach and stay on has more to do with being in sync with the community, who are usually racist and batshit paranoid. If you aren't in sync with that, you either have to keep your head down, or you will eventually get harassed into leaving due to vague complaints.

Abusive parenting is normal here

Okay. So starting with my student teaching. The woman I worked under was a total fucking psychopath. She bragged in the teachers' lounge about how she disciplined her daughter and people don't discipline their kids like that now. By discipline, I mean she told a story about how she chased her daughter down a hallway, dragged her by the hair of her head, and spanked her until she was raw. This was part of a story where she was bragging about how well behaved her daughter was due to her parenting.

If you're wondering if anyone pushed back against this, the answer is that they didn't. They were nodding their heads in affirmation. That's the problem with rural schools in a nutshell. The community hires from the community, and the community is backward as shit and filled with people who were raised in abusive conservative fundie homes. The parents, by the way, loved that teacher because she wasn't one of those soft "liberal" teachers. Parents, more than anyone else, wanted us to hit their kids and were always disappointed when they didn't get spanked. Child abuse is a way of life down here.

Teachers who are fearful of knowledge

Okay, so this woman was a science teacher. That's what I trained to teach. Science. I did so because I wasn't just one of those "science is awesome" Sagan-heads. I genuinely cared about teaching science as more than just fun facts, but as a methodology for uncovering the truth. I naively went into the field thinking that's what most science teachers would be like. I kind of hoped that I'd at least find a community of like-minded individuals in this ignorant state.

Over my entire teaching career, I literally never met another science teacher like me who was pro-science and pro-skepticism. They were overwhelmingly either just dumb and teaching rotely, or they were conspiratorial and fearful of science. This is exactly what an Arkansas school board wants out of a science teacher. They know they have to teach science, but they are afraid of science and see it as the most dangerous subject to teach in their little fundagelical minds. So they hire people who are afraid of science.

That crazy woman I trained under? She ranted about drones being used to spy on us. She told the kids GMOs were dangerous, and she told them homeopathic medicines were something she'd researched to help her friend with cancer. She wasn't unique in that regard. Every other science teacher I met in Arkansas was terrified of GMOs and had some conspiracy they wanted to rant about. One teacher's bugaboo was allergies and how he thought more people were getting allergies because of chemicals being put in the water. He brushed it off when I said it was probably due to more sensitive testing. Another teacher told their students the most horrendous and completely inaccurate facts about nuclear energy.

They're not sending us their best people

The point is these people weren't the best and brightest. Often, they weren't even adequate. One guy I worked with became a science teacher because he needed something to teach alongside coaching. He was dumb as a box of rocks and just barely passed his praxis exams after three tries. I know most people weren't going to ace these tests like I did, but the cutoff for a passing score in Arkansas is hilariously low. Yet, when he finally passed, it was only by a single point, and he recounted it to me like it was only by the grace of god.

Another teacher, a math teacher who was probably the worst speller I'd ever met, got certified in Texas, which has a lower standard for math, and he transferred his certification to Arkansas. So he only was able to teach math in Arkansas on a technicality. The way it works is that you only have to be recertified if you let your certification lapse. All that's required to recertify is doing 30 hours of PD per year, and then, every couple of years, you have to do the recertification process. But this idiot was too stupid to do that, and he let his certification expire. So then, he was teaching math without a license because he couldn't pass the Arkansas tests. (You're allowed to teach for so long as long as you're pursuing certification.)

Propaganda and Indoctrination

Half of the teachers I met might as well have been missionaries. It's illegal to push your religion or politics on students, but fuck if anyone will actually enforce that. Actually, let me step back there. Fuck if anyone will actually enforce that unless you're liberal or non-Christian. The state is an unofficial conservative theocracy so if the teacher wants to rant about gays or Jesus, there's very little chance any parent will even bother to complain. (Even liberals around here know they're outnumbered and won't win.) Even if the parent complains to the Principal, they'll only "have a word" with the teacher in question, most likely to have a chummy conversation where they eye roll about the parent and discuss ways they can continue to evangelize more subtly.

Even if the Principal is the type who takes this seriously, the teacher will only get a vague note in their file because no school board around here is going to fire a teacher for proselytizing children. They don't want the school to get burned down by an angry mob of Fox News zombies. Even if it makes it to the state ethics board, I've seen the state ethics board literally do nothing about a counselor who ignored a suicidal student, a teacher who was caught drunk driving, a superintendent who was manipulating the system to siphon more money into the school, and so many other things. The only thing the ethics board actually takes a license away for is cheating on standardized testing (got to keep our corporate donors happy) and actually fucking a student. Even if you bring a teacher up on proselytizing, they'll get a warning and be back in the classroom the next day.

So if you're a kid in a rural school, get ready for your teacher to unsubtly tell you about how Jesus is such an important part of their life or straight-up rant about the Democrats. When I was a student in Arkansas schools, I had teachers tell me: 1) All gay people should be thrown in prison 2) HIV-positive patients should be shipped to an island or burned (it was the 90s) 3) the Jews brought the holocaust on to themselves by rejecting Jesus 4) the teacher was boycotting Levis jeans because they supported gay people. That's just a sampling of shit I heard as a kid in Arkansas from freaking teachers.

While working as a teacher, I knew of teachers who latched onto kids with poor home lives and invited them over to their homes so they could do "prayer studies" with them. The kids went because they were kind to them and offered food. In case you're wondering, they got away with this because it was a husband and wife, so parents allowed it. (I'm just going to say that I'm actually quite certain this was entirely above board sex-wise. I knew the individuals, and while I despised what they were doing, I knew they were entirely sincere.)

Another teacher, a Trump supporter, went into a rant about how they needed to give all the teachers guns to fight off school shooters (because restricting guns in any way was tOtAlItArIaNiSm.) I nodded along because I was smart enough to know disagreeing publicly will get you shunned or harassed. All I could think in my head was "Dude, if they ever give you nutters guns, that's the day I quit. There will be 10 dead kids within a week." On that topic, one teacher I know of grabbed a student by the throat because they were pissed at them, and they didn't lose their job.

The history teacher, the one who wanted us to all have guns was teaching that the Civil War was about tariffs. You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. Hundreds of thousands of people went to war over tariffs that were at their lowest point in decades. It had nothing to do with the people they owned and shackled up like a Saw movie. The Civics teacher pushed Trump election conspiracies.

Another teacher, who had a family member who had a terminal illness and was literally only getting their medical treatment paid through Obamacare would go off on rants about Obama and transgender students.

Harassment

At one point, I was harassed by the campus cop. He found out I was in support of BLM, and literally screamed at me. Later, he transitioned to simply refusing to acknowledge my existence. Like, if I said anything to him, he would pretend he couldn't hear me. The dude was fucking insane and filled with hate. I'm pretty sure his domestic situation with his wife was abusive due to things he said. He was so angry and radicalized that it was never the students I worried would be a mass shooter. It was him. I was literally afraid he would come in one day and shoot the place up. He wasn't an oddity though. Every one of our resource officers was racist and unethical. One was running a vaping ring with students. Another took special joy in cracking down on Latino students.

Eventually, I started getting harassment from students though, and that's what led to me leaving. There are two things that led to increasing harassment. First, I had one conservative student who hated me and surmised that I must be a Clinton supporter. I never said that, but because I was one of the few teachers who didn't violate the rules about discussing religion or politics, they guess that I was a liberal atheist. So they started working to get me fired.

The second thing is that the Arkansas standards changed so that teaching evolution became part of my classroom standards. Just so you know, most schools in Arkansas don't actually teach evolution, even though they're supposed to. The way it works is teachers put it last on their things to teach, and oopsie, I just ran out of time at the end of the year. Some teachers know evolution is real, but they don't teach it because the backlash is too much to take. Others don't teach it because they're fundagelicals themselves, so they go along with the informal conspiracy to not teach evolution. I say informal conspiracy because it's not like they all get together in a back room and decide this. It's just the culture and incentives are all there to not teach it.

I actually taught evolution, and while I had always dealt with some degree of negativity, looking back, I have to say that was the point where I started getting a lot more. I can't emphasize enough how brainwashed these kids were. I'm not saying all of them because there were absolutely kids who believed in evolution, but they were in a minority and knew to keep their mouths shut. But it's sort of staggering to try to teach the history of the Earth and have a kid repeatedly try to prove to you that there was a global flood.

How harassment actually works in the real world

This is the thing I want people to understand. Harassment in the real world isn't usually as obvious as in a movie. No one drives by your house and throws a brick through your window. No one calls you up and leaves threatening messages. No one will ever fire you for being liberal or an atheist. Because these people are dumb as fuck, but they're also very clever at being shitty people. They know they can't walk up and say to the school board, "Fire so and so because they're teaching evolution." They know that's illegal technically.

So they just start making up vague complaints. Principals, even ones who were supportive like my last Principal, are reactive. If a parent comes to them to complain about a teacher, they're going to assume the teacher did something wrong and needs to be talked to. So the girl who found out I was a Hillary Clinton supporter suddenly decided I "made her uncomfortable" and "looked her weird." The great thing about these types of innuendos and character assaults is that you don't have to provide any real facts. It's all about how you just don't like that person. Remember that teachers are one of the few professions where you can actually be fired simply because the community doesn't like you.

So that fell flat because, like I said, my Principal was actually decent and understood how flimsy that was. So then, that girls boyfriend made a complaint about how I'd yelled at him in front of all the students. Unfortunately for him, this supposed incident happened while we were in a part of the school with cameras so it was obviously bullshit. However, parents calling in upset is still a big deal so I was told that I should try to be nicer to him in the future and win the parents over.

The point is that it's basically death by a thousand cuts from little gripes and exaggerated concerns. Another student flat-out lied and said I cussed them out in class. I know that some of this was actually instigated by a staff member who didn't like me. So they encourage students to complain about me. At one point, I know they actually set up a kid's parents to lodge a complaint against me. I know this because the language of the complaint was obviously written by them, and when I was having the parent conference, they actually stayed behind work (something they never did) and didn't leave our adjoining rooms until it was over. They apparently wanted to listen in and see how it went. This conservative teacher at various times: told me the wrong place for a meeting, got kids to say they would show up for an after school event and then not show up, convinced an entire group of students to quit a club I was sponsoring, spread rumors about me to parents.

I'm done

The final straw was covid. I tried to stick it out, but the day a kid told me he wasn't going to wear a mask because "Biden isn't the real President" was the point where I decided I was done. This came from teachers too. The biology teacher wore a mask below their nose. The staff refused to stop having potlucks throughout the entire pandemic. Some people can't be saved.

edit: I forgot to mention the English teacher I met while I was doing my student-teacher training. She was forcing her class to write essays on how Obama wasn't a real US Citizen. All throughout my teacher program, I'd been told over and over that you could get fired for talking politics in the classroom, and this bitch was literally forcing kids to write essays about how Obama was a secret Muslim. And nothing was done about it. She could get away with it because Arkansas is so white and racist. To put it into context, the county she was teaching in was 94% white and voted for Trump by 78% in 2020.

[saranel]

The Last Jedi review, sorta

I don’t think I’ve talked enough (if at all) about what a huge Star Wars nerd I am on this blog, mostly because I didn’t love TFA as much as most people seemed to and I just never joined in the renewed fandom frenzy.

TL;DR on my views on TFA: It was fun enough, some interesting new characters, beautiful visuals, but I’d seen that movie before.  It came out in ‘77 and it was much better then.  Homage is one thing, rip off is completely another.  Mostly, I guess I was just disappointed that they didn’t dare to try and move the universe forward a bit, beyond the already trodden path.

Say what you will about the prequels, but I will always, always maintain there’s nothing wrong with them a better script and director couldn’t fix.  George tries, bless him, but he can’t write dialogue worth a damn.  Not even Meryl Streep could’ve made the line “So love has blinded you” any better than Natalie Portman did, and both she and Hayden have proven themselves to be much better actors than they were in Star Wars.  I’m not bothering with Ewan because he was one of the few really great things about the Prequels. 

That having been said, what George can do is weave a decent background story, and the Prequel Trilogy’s story is much, much richer than the OT’s.  Taking off our nostalgia-colored glasses for a moment, let us be honest: the OT was so successful because it did a very simple thing, and did it well, and had a cast with wonderful chemistry. The story itself is nothing to rave about: just your simple Evil Empire vs Plucky Rebels story.  But the Prequels actually got political and much darker than the OT did, they just did it clumsily.  Still, it was something new in the Star Wars universe and George always tried to expand the known worlds by giving us even small glimpses of other cultures and planets.  Don’t forget that Star Wars was never meant to be high-brow Science Fiction a la Philip Dick, but a space adventure.  This doesn’t mean that the story can’t have nuance, but the point of Star Wars was always to be a fairytale exploration of a fictional galaxy.

Compared to that, the new trilogy seemed extremely lacking to me.  And seeing The Last Jedi a few days ago really cemented that.  Never before have I seen so many things happening in one movie while nothing really happens at all.  It makes Attack of the Clones look interesting in comparison, and that’s saying a lot.  ALSO LUKE, WTF HAS THE MOUSE DONE TO MY SPACE SON, THE FUCKING GALL.

So yes, surprise-surprise, TLJ manages to rip off Empire (with a dash of Battlestar Galactica thrown in for good measure) and does so poorly.  It was not a terrible film by any means, but I honestly thought it was no better than Phantom Menace. And Phantom Menace had the Duel of Fates.  So. 

(okay, to be fair, TLJ didn’t have Jar Jar so that’s one point in its favor)

In a nutshell:

(cut for spoilers)

THE GOOD

- Poe.  Poe was good. Moar Poe, there was a serious lack of Poe in TFA and it has been rectified, this was a very good decision. 

- The silent scene.  Y’all know the one.  People in my theater literally gasped in unison.  I was bored outta my skull up until then and as soon as I realized what Holdo was about to do, I sat up, all ‘oshit’ and it was amazing.  Beautifully shot, beautifully clever, and the most badass hero death in the SW universe.  Only comes in second in terms of best scene in the movie because the other one involved a more established and beloved character.

- MY SON LUKE KICKING HIS NEPHEW’S ASS LIKE IT AIN’T NO BIG THANG.  In full disagreement over how shit went down between them in the past, but Luke showing Kylo who’s the most goddamn powerful Jedi in the galaxy (which Luke did canonically become in later years btw) was such a rewarding scene.  Also, he was dressed in black.  Like in ROTJ. Because fuck yeah.

- Rey’s parentage.  Most people probably hated that she’s not a Skywalker but I just... kinda loved the suggestion that she was the Force’s answer to Kylo?  It’s happened before with Anakin, so this isn’t exactly new, and Anakin, too, came from ‘nothing.’ I liked it.  She doesn’t have to have illustrious parentage to be important in the series, and as much as I love my Space Drama Queen clan, it’s time the universe moves on from the Kardashians of the galaxy.

- Luke’s death.  I don’t agree with 99% of what went down with Luke in this trilogy, I think it was deeply out of character, but his ending?  That was spot on.  Did I want more out of his storyline? Obviously, but examined in a vacuum, his ending was beautiful to me.  Especially that last scene.  Best scene in the movie from start to end.

- Yoda manipulating the goddamn heavens to rain thunder upon the ancient tree.  Ilu Yoda

- Leia and Holdo discussing Poe.  This was an A+++ short scene. Get it, ladies.

- Snoke is gone, thank the heavens.  Worst-named villain in movie history, I couldn’t stop laughing every time someone said SUPREME LEADER snoke.

- CRYSTAL FOXES OMG

- Luke getting his kicks in that boring-ass island via EXTREME ROD FISHING, lmao the nerd

THE MEH

- So, um... Kylo and Rey?  ....ew? (did they not think Finn and Rey were super cute or)

- So, um... Finn and Rose?  ....ookaaaay? (did they not see Poe biting down on his lip when he saw Finn in his jacket or)

- I don’t really care for ships in this trilogy tbh, whatever.  Guess I’m steering clear from attachment until I know who’s related to whom (THIS IS A DANGEROUS UNIVERSE TO SHIP IN OKAY).  Plus, not really feeling particularly strong toward any couple, just... not Kylo and Rey, ew.

- Rose.  I liked her, but... they hardly gave her anything to do.  That casino storyline was such a mess, made it seem like she was there just to be there.

- Finn’s storyline. Snoozefest.  I like him, but... see above.

- lol wtf happened to Chewie...? He was just... there?

THE BAD

- SPACE-WALKING LEIA.  I’M SORRY, OKAY, I know this scene will be big with many people, and lord knows I wanted to see Space Mom use the Force beyond that Spidey Sense shit, but this was just so dumb. 

- All the ‘humor.’ My god, just... no.  Not every scene needs to be steeped in Whedon-speak, please stahp.  I will admit the first scene got a chuckle out of me, but the rest...

- The ‘plot.’  This was literally an extended car chase scene in space with some Sense8 type shit thrown in. Rey hardly even did any training, ffs.  

- so the force-sensitive member of the trio goes on to be trained by a wise, isolated mentor and finds herself drawn to a place steeped in the dark side and ends up seeing only herself reflected in there, meanwhile the rest of the characters are involved in a chase across the galaxy, running away from the evil empire, and at some point decide to ask for help form a well-known swindler who betrays them and in the end everything seems bleak with just a tiny glimmer of hope. HMMMMMM. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. 

- quite frankly, I’m still in shock Rey finished the film with two fully biological arms

- O hei, look, it’s The Salty planet Hoth.  With pod-racing.

- Really? Rey blushing at shirtless Kylo? Really

- WHERE IS FORCE GHOST ANAKIN TO GO “BINCH I REDEEMED MYSELF IN THE END STOP THIS SHIT, ALSO I DID THIS FIRST AND I DID IT BETTER” TO HIS WANNABE GRANDSON

- The whole damn Casino storyline.  I don’t care if it’s meant to set up something for the last movie (probably not) but it was long, boring, and a clumsily written attempt at a storyline that could’ve been more nuanced and a good addition.

- why did we have to see Luke milk that alien Y

- NOT ONE DECENT LIGHTSABER FIGHT THE FUQ.  

- Leia (and Han in TFA) giving up on her son instead of beating some sense into his ass with a space slipper. Y’ALL KNOW SHE WOULD.  Baaaaad characterization. Space Mom would never.

- Also, fuck whoever decided that Leia, who canonically has the exact same force potential as Luke because they’re twins, never developed her powers beyond Force Sense or whatever.  If you’re not gonna give the woman a lightsaber, at least have her Force Push fools out of her way. 

- Wtf Rey you obliterated that nice alien’s cart and didn’t even apologize they work hard every day you should be ashamed

- why was it meant to be funny when porgs were slapped around wtf

- “what’s that canon?”  “Basically a small death star” kjashKLAFJSHSAJKDFSADFHSAK 

- Kylo. Can he just die, plz, the expanded universe did the Evil Solo son storyline so much better.  Yet another way in which this trilogy is totes an ~*homage*~  No shade on the actor though, he did a great job.  It’s just the violent manchild character I cannot stand.

- So like... we’re never gonna learn what Snoke’s deal was...? Or how he got to Kylo...? ....Okay then.

- This movie was 2 and a half hours long.

[captainspiritualpants]

Footprints of the fuck ups OR footprints of the Gods?

The internet is the entire fucking collective knowledge of our entire human species... it is hugely disappointing that it's top trending uses are for porn, Netflix, and shopping. It would be tragic to lose all this digital knowledge in a cataclysmic event. Nothing would be preserved. It's baffling that we take so much for granted. These stable times will not last. It is the nature of nature to change. Society explores shallow ego gratifications, and completely takes the magic of life for granted. The agenda of science and business is to advance and enrich themselves. Business finds only low consciousness crap to be marketable. Psychology and sociology are being carefully used and funded with billions of dollars every single year to carefully fine tune and lab test the best ways to propagandize you, to fill your mind with all the wrong ideas about how to live life, so you become a consumerist zombie. This is against your ultimate highest good as a human being. No one ever asks the question, is this truthful, is this healthy, is this dragging down humanity. I feel as if I was born into a insane asylum... I look around and see magic and insanity everywhere I look simultaneously, it would seem that they are sewn together by the thread of ignorance. The scary thing is, we are so brainwashed that we fight to the death to support the very things that are responsible for brainwashing us. As John Anthony West put it, we should be weary of the five cowboys of the apocalypse: "Capitalism, Nationalism, Democracy, Technology, Entertainment" In other words, error in human use - Human folly in a nutshell. As Leo Gura of Actualized.org points out there are plenty more ways that the widely accepted paradigms of society fuck us in the ass if you look closely: In a nutshell: 1. Food Industry 2. Alcohol and Drugs 3. The Medicine and Pharmaceutical Industry 4. College/Schooling Education Industry - The financial/curricular bullshit they peddle. 5. Celebrities - Following, Watching, being curious about them, reading up on, gossiping. 6. Books - “Reading the junk books, not the good ones.” 7.) Video Games - “The entire industry is one giant treadmill of chimp behavior” 8. TV Shows - “Chimps in a cage” 9. News Industry - “Peddles bullshit to pick us against each other in order to distract us from any actual important issues. 10. Social Media - “Monkey Chatter” 11. The entire Internet 12. Pop Culture 13. Gossip 14. Status Game 15. Porn - “You’re just a chimp in a zoo cage jerking himself off.” 16. Shopping 17. Fashion 18. Tech Bubble Trend 19. Financial Market - Loans, mortgages, credit cards, etc. 20. Night Clubs - “Zoo for chimps with dance music.” 21. Car Trends (Car Love) 22. Holidays (Marketing) 23. Politics - “Two cages of chimps side by side at the zoo flinging shit at each other.” 24. Religion - “A chimp walking out on stage dressed in a pope hate and a robe, carrying a scepter, thinking that hes somebody.” 25. Marriage - “Deludes you into thinking that you can escape actual personal growth. Instead of you self developing and going looking for truth and finding your authentic self, you go and get MARRIED… you escape into marriage!” 26. Romance Narrative - “Horny desperate little chimp seeking attachment so they can forget about all their problems in life.” 27. Family - “Low consciousness bullshit. Troop of chimps. Disfunctional sitcom of chimptum.” Inheritance of the “family values” that keep you wrapped up in societies bullshit. 28. Career - (Typical 9-5) “Using a chimp career to fuel all the chimp behaviors.” 29. Stock Market/Financial Companies 30. Sports - “Team Loyalty” These are literally "Traps for the eyeballs!” The most important question that we should asks are selves is this. Are we using these behaviors to distract ourselves from finding our authentic selves or seeking out truth? Yes? Then we should just notice that, not overreact, but first just notice... It is important to be mindful of chimp behaviors. To steer clear from the path of least resistance. Society is an amusement park for the ego, it distracts us from looking inward. Society doesn’t give a fuck about us. Society keeps us BUSY, but distracts us from any actual BEING. It distracts us from the very core of what we are. There needs to be a major shift in how we use our life force if we are interested in transcending chimp-tum and arriving at a level of consciousness that is not subject to the death of the physical body. Our goal here as a species might just be to become "spiritually" immortal. I mean why not fill our cups with highly conscious pursuits instead of filling them with unconscious chimp behaviors? As Dennis Mckenna put it, "When the bonfire of understanding grows, it illuminates the surface area of ignorance." "There's one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea that's time has come" (Victor Hugo)... The opposing forces are fueled by ideas who's time has not yet gone...You see, where ever there is a paradigm, there is an an army. It's time for a new paradigm, a more spiritual paradigm, a healthier more evolved paradigm, a non-paradigm paradigm, one where we are more connected to Being. May the war rage on.

[megacircuit9universe]

X-Tech: Never Possible Until it is

THU JAN 02 2020

I just watched the latest video by YouTuber, Isaac Arthur, who I’ve been following for years, and greatly respect, addressing time travel, but while he tried to cover every version of time travel that comes up in science fiction, and in legit scientific discourse... he did not cover the version I talk about in this blog.

I was a bit surprised, but then again, mine (explained in the entry entitled, Time Travel Basics, and fleshed out in some follow ups shortly after it) is basically the John Titor version of time travel.

And over the 13 or so years since I first read the Titor stuff online, I’ve noticed that nobody, either in fiction, or legit discourse, ever does venture anywhere near the Titor model... which is kinda strange, given that so many other, clearly unworkable models pop up all the time.

It’s not as though the Titor model is just so ridiculous that it’s not even worth considering... because, well... plenty of very ridiculous models for time travel are given very serious consideration, in our movies and science fiction novels, if not elsewhere.

Still, the original message boards where Titor appeared, to talk about how he was a time traveler, and explain what he knew about how his military issue time distortion unit worked, were forums for physics students and physics enthusiasts.

And what always struck me reading the back and forth on those forums was that nobody ever challenged his technical explanations.  Everybody seemed to agree that the physics part of his story held up.

But that part was way over my head at the time, so I was very curious to understand why the physics seemed to hold up so well.

It took me most of those 13 years, watching recorded lectures and other videos on YouTube, and listening to several audio books on my commutes, dealing with different aspects of both quantum physics and string theory... before it finally clicked in my head, and I could see that Titor’s explanation not only squared with physics, but so did the schematics he’d provided.

Again, go back and read, Time Travel Basics, but, in a nutshell, it’s this idea of using two micro black holes... controlled by manifolds that inject electrons either into them, to increase their spin, or at angles across their event horizons, to slow the spin... to create two nested bubbles of frame-dragged spacetime, the inner one with positive time, and the outer one with negative time.

I won’t get further into it than that here, except to say that the one thing Titor talked about that always stumped me were the gravity sensors.  

Inside his two nested bubbles of spacetime, he was essentially in his own tiny universe, outside the main universe, but was able to maintain a lock on the Earth’s movements backward through time (rotating backward and revolving around the sun backward as the whole solar system revolved backward around the center of the galaxy) thanks to gravity sensors that would give feedback to the manifolds, telling them how to maneuver the two micro-singularities to stay with the GPS coordinates on Earth’s surface, from which he had departed.

I finally got my answer one morning in the car on the way to work, listening to an audio book on string theory, when the author explained how, unlike light, gravity could be felt between branes (or membranes) of space time.

It’s one possible explanation for why gravity is such a weak force on our own brane, compared to much stronger forces like electromagnetism... because gravity leaks out into the greater, “bulk,” of the multiverse.

He didn’t know it, but he’d told me that Titor’s gravity sensors could work... which was the final piece of the puzzle.

Everything else, from creating micro-singularities in particle accelerators, and capturing them magnetically, for industrial use... to manipulating their spin, mass, and attitude with a manifold of cathode rays (such manifolds were how old color tube TV sets worked)... to the nuclear powering of the device... to the many worlds theory... all passed, for being physically plausible.  So when the gravity sensors checked out too... well, that’s when I knew Titor was probably telling the truth.

So why am I so alone in this belief, in 2020... and why has the whole Titor model pretty much vanished from the conversation?

Well... this is what you might expect to happen when a person with a working model of something tries to explain it to people from the past who just aren’t there yet.

Imagine going back to the year 2000, and explaining on a serious tech forum how a typical smart phone from 2010 works... it’s a got a touch screen, and a bunch of gyros and sensors packed inside, and a lithium battery and... bla bla bla... 

Even though they are all well versed on the subject of tech, and are only about seven years away from the first smart phone... it’s likely that nobody will take your strange new idea seriously.  

Some will point out how certain features are just too far away... and the internet infrastructure couldn’t support such a thing... and the level of miniaturization isn’t realistic... and the batteries would be volatile and prone to explosions.

Others will argue that even if such a device could be Frankensteined together, nobody would want one device to do everything.  Nobody wants to watch TV shows on their alarm clock, that is also their flashlight! 

Why would they be like that?  Well... you know how people are.. when they consider themselves the experts and the vanguards of a given field.

Who are you anyway?  You’re just some rando who claims to own one of these so-called, “smart phones,” and you don’t even know how it works.  

You’re just a fanciful futurist describing some fanciful vision for a thing that would be nearly impossible to make, and totally impractical, probably, and that nobody asked for.  Get out of here!

My other example would be explaining how a modern airplane works, to scientists in... say... 1875.  Even if you were spot on with your description of a typical 737... with its wings, aelerons, flaps, jets, etc... its hydraulic control tubes and its aluminum body... fueled by a petroleum based liquid stored in its wings...

They would counter by explaining to you why none of that would actually work, and even if it could... nobody would ever convince a hundred regular civilians to climb into such a death trap and “fly” from New York to Los Angeles... in “hours.”

Get the fuck out of here!

My argument here, about experts and vanguards rejecting working ideas from the future... is kind of borne out by how far off the mark they always are, when asked to envision future tech.

Such visions are always hilariously wrong, because they are always clearly based on exactly what they know in the moment... plus what little they know about a few experimental things going on.  

But they never think about the unforeseen breakthroughs, both large and small, that can help make seemingly ridiculous things like the Boeing 737, or the IPhone 4, possible, practical, and marketable.

The above two analogies are not perfect though, because in John Titor’s case, he was in the military, using a military issue time machine.  It wasn’t a tech civilians even knew about, necessarily... and also, as I said earlier, there really wasn’t any push back from the nerds on his forums about the physics.  

They agreed it was theoretically sound enough not to bother attacking, and instead focused on his descriptions of the future... his past... all the world events to come later in the 2000s, 20-teens, and beyond.

And, while he answered honestly, he also explained that his appearance in 2000 meant they were all now on a different world line, that would not play out the same way.

His recollections were framed as predictions... and when the predictions didn’t come to pass... Titor was considered by most, debunked.

Some argued for a while... correctly, that they were never predictions, because he explained that we were on a different world line than his.  But... others countered, by pointing out how this argument makes his predictions unfalsifiable... which, in logical terms, means they’re garbage.

The whole discussion ended there... without ever really touching the mainstream consciousness.  John Titor was considered, by those who knew about him, to be just a fun hoax... and, like any other meme... fell out of fashion and was forgotten.

But my point is... he had schematics!  He had sound explanations for how the tech worked!  Screw the predictions... or arguments that the predictions are unfalsifiable!  The tech holds up!  Look at that!  Talk about that!

Look at the rather flawless descriptions of how it came to be invented, what it was being used for, and what it was like to operate a time distortion unit, from the perspective of the guy in the driver’s seat.  

It really irks me that everybody has both ignored and forgotten about that very tangible, testable part of Titor’s story... and then come back today with those same tired old arguments like, “If time travel were possible, we would have heard from one of them by now!”

Oh, really?

“If it were possible, we would have time tourists all over the place, and always would have, since Ancient Rome.”

Really?  Cuz... what if it was just a military tech not available to the public and what if it only had a small practical range of a few decades... as explained both by Titor, and by my Time Travel Basics entry?  Huh?

Huh???

Well... I guess I’m just gonna have to be content with being a crackpot, with no audience. :(

Be that as it may, my  model predicts that WW2 is the great historical barrier for time travel... with only a few rogue time travelers daring to go even as far back as the late 1940s... where they could still hope to refill their oxygen tanks, and get some kind of crude repairs done to their time distortion units.

Most only go as far back as the mid 1970s, with a few outliers hitting the 60s or 50s, and probably never finding their way back to anything like the home worldline they came from, after straying that far afield with no way to establish their, “divergence” to any useful degree.

But the twenty-teens were (are, will be) a good pit stop... the Denver, or Phoenix of Time Travel... if it were a coast to coast drive across the U.S... because things were (are, will be) just advanced enough to stop and get your bearings, or resupply, or get repairs done... but far enough away from the home time (which is the late 2030s) to bother stopping.

It’s possible that the 2020s will be the same kind of Denver for time travelers of, say, the 2050s... and that the 2030s themselves will be a Denver for time travelers of the 2080s... but if so... these more sophisticated time travelers from further in the future will probably be a lot more careful about the cybernetic impact of their pit stops in these future decades.

In other words, they’ll be more careful not to turn the internet, and therefore the world around them, into a total circus of unreality, in which all the locals question their sanity every day on a regular basis.

Things should calm down for us, in the 2020s, is what I’m saying... at least in the socio-political sphere.  The climate’s gonna be something different, but...

...whereas in the twenty-teens you were saying, “I can’t believe so and so is the leader of my country and so many assholes are coming out of the woodwork, and the rest of us feel unmoored from reality, as if we’ve been sucked into a parallel universe!”

In the 2020s you’re more likely to be saying, “I can’t believe we had a thunder snowphoon in July, and that Lake Eerie is on fire, but thank God the world’s leaders are on top of this, and have the support of pretty much everybody, except for the oldest, shittiest cranks who we all ignore.”

And maybe you’ll also be saying, “Thank God, also for [X-tech] without which everybody would be so fucked right now!”

Man, that was a long ramble!

Sorry.

I’m going to bed.

[cromulentbookreview]

NeverDarkGodsNightGraveDawn

Never flinch.

Never fear.

And never, ever forget.

Oh shit, I flinched. Sorry. Can we start over?

I’m a huge fan of Jay Kristoff’s collaborations with Amie Kaufman - The Illuminae Files and Aurora Rising are some of my most favorite books ever - so it seemed weird that I hadn’t read any of Kristoff’s other stuff. I’d heard of Nevernight (it’s kind of hard not to if you hand around on book twitter) and I had the first two books on my Kindle, I just hadn’t read them yet. When I snapped up the eARC of Darkdawn and thought to myself: maybe I should actually read these and see what all the fuss is about. People on the internet seem very, very passionate about their love for the Nevernight Chronicle, after all. 

Also, if there’s a nerdy bandwagon, I’m bound to join. I like to be included.

So - The Nevernight Chronicle! I just spent the past couple of weeks binge reading through all three books (yes, weeks, I’m slow, OK?), and...holy shit. Like. Really, holy shit. 

There is a pretty basic litmus test I’ve devised to determine whether or not someone will like The Nevernight Chronicle. If you want to know if you’ll like The Nevernight Chronicle, ask yourself this: do you like Game of Thrones? Does all the gory violence, graphic sex, and foul language of Game of Thrones not faze you? In fact, does it - gasp! - lend an aspect of realism to the fantastical setting? In fact, do you have a Game of Thrones shaped hole in your life right now now that the TV series has ended and the wait for The Winds of Winter seems endless? Well, then, I’ve the book series for you, Gentlefriends! There is less rape, incest and violence against women in these books, too! 

And if you want blood n’ guts n’ gore galore, you shall not be disappointed. Our protagonist, Mia Corvere, hardly goes five pages in any of the three books without stabbing or slashing or punching or otherwise causing someone some form of grievous bodily harm and/or death. While swearing. And smoking. And displaying a general bad attitude.

These books are definitely not for everyone. If you don’t like blood n’ guts n’ gore and foul language and snarky characters, then you won’t like The Nevernight Chronicle. That’s fine, you don’t have to read anything you don’t like and I’m not going to make you. 

You’re missing out, though. Seriously.

So! The Nevernight Chronicle! The three books are essentially the tale of the roaring rampage of revenge of a girl named Mia Corvere. When she was ten years old, her beloved father, Dairus Corvere, was hanged as a traitor to the Itreyan Republic. Counsel Julius Scaeva, leader of the republic, then had Mia’s mother and baby brother thrown in prison, where they later died. As for Mia, Scaeva had her put in a barrel to be thrown into a canal, but not before his lackey, Justicus Remus, brutally murders Mia’s beloved cat, Captain Puddles. RIP Captain Puddles, you deserved better even though you weren’t a real cat.

(What I imagine Captain Puddles would’ve been like, had he not been tragically murdered by a mad Australian).

Mia, of course, escapes the barrel, with the help of a living shadow taking the form of a cat, whom she names Mr. Kindly. She takes refuge with a foul-mouthed, foul-tempered shopkeep named Mercurio, who happens to be a member of a church of assassins. Once she’s old enough, Mia heads off to join the Red Church and become a blade (assassin) so that she can acquire the skills to get her revenge on Julius Scaeva. 

That’s the main plot of Nevernight, poorly explained and in a nutshell. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not big on assassin stories, but I enjoyed Nevernight mainly because both the writing and the characters were so full of snark. I’m willing to overlook a great deal if there’s a high level of snark involved.

Anyway! In the second book in the series, Godsgrave, Mia discovers that the Red Church and its cohort of assassins isn’t all that she thought it was, so she hatches the world’s most insane plan: she’ll sell herself into slavery, become a gladiatii, and fight her way to the ultimate championship where, if she wins, she’ll get a chance to murder both Scaeva and his partner-in-crime/frenemy, Cardinal Duomo, at the same time.

Of course nothing goes according to plan. Which leads us, finally, to book three: Darkdawn!

It’s tough reviewing the last book of a series if you’re not certain if anyone reading said review has read the first or second books*. I’m just going to proceed as if you’ve already read the books, because, otherwise, there’s a ton of shit I didn’t cover in those “in a nutshell” descriptions of Nevernight and Godsgrave. Like the whole Crown of the Moon thing, the conflict between the goddess Niah and god Aa, or the fact that Itreya has three suns and night only falls once every two and a half years. Or, really, anything about Mia and her Darkin powers or the nature of Mr. Kindly... 

But if you’re already a fan and are desperate for some Darkdawn details, you’re probably already eager for me to just get on with it already.

Right-o, then.

So, with all the worldbuilding and anticipation Kristoff built up with Nevernight and Godsgrave, does Darkdawn give us a satisfying conclusion to the story of Mia Corvere? 

O, yes, gentlefriend. 

Yes it does. 

It delivers all that and more. I wonder just how much preparation Kristoff put into these books because every lingering question you have from the first two books is answered. You’re not left hanging.

Yes, basically.

And, let us not forget, that this one of those series where the author promised on page 1 that Mia would die. And thanks to Jay “Meet Your New Favorite Oh Wait They’re Dead” Kristoff, there are plenty of moments in Darkdawn that feel as a little something like this:

Darkdawn absolutely lives up to all the promises made in the first two books - there’s plenty of action, plenty of blood and violence and tastefully written smut. And footnotes!** The book starts right where we left off in Godsgrave - no weird time-jumps, no flash-forwards followed by flashbacks like the first two books, we begin with Mia immediately after the Magni. 

After the maps and Dramatis Personae, of course.

In all honesty, though, there’s not much I can say without spoiling everything. But if you’re a fan of the books, rest assured, you will not be disappointed. Everything you’ve been wanting out of a finale for this series you get. Answers, action, pirates, stabbings, sexytimes, pools full of a God’s blood, angry camels, undead ex-lovers, eye gouging, treks across the Ashkahi Whisperwastes, cigarillo smoke, Mr. Kindly and Eclipse bitching at each other, and, you guessed it, more stabbings! Because this is the grand finale of Nevernight we’re talking about. Truedark is here, people. Prepare yourselves!

You are in for one hell of a book.

Oh, hey, by the way: are you aware that the Nevernight Chronicle is not YA? Because, even though it’s very popular with the YA crowd and Kristoff does write other books that are YA, Nevernight is not YA. As Jay Kristoff will tell you, over and over and over and over and over again, it’s not. These are adult books for intended for adults. It’s why, when I go to Powell’s, I find them in the Gold Room, not the Rose Room. If you are an adult with teenage children and you don’t want them reading Nevernight, well, then, you need to do a better job of policing their reading material. You’re the adult in this situation, after all.

To review: if you don’t want your children reading certain books, whose responsibility is it? Mine? No. Yours? Absolutely. And if your kids start checking out forbidden books behind your back to read on the sly, well...that’s your problem. It’s not the librarian’s problem, or the bookseller’s problem and it is most certainly not Jay Kristoff’s problem either. Ask yourself: why does my kid want to read these books so bad that they’re willing to go behind my back? Perhaps its the allure of the forbidden combined with teenage rebellion? 

Seriously, my parents never policed what I read, and I turned out just fine. In fact, the only thing my unhindered book consumption led to was a master’s degree in Library Science and a dumb tumblr blog. Don’t worry, neither of these conditions are fatal. I knew kids in Junior High who were reading Stephen King books and, gasp shock, they turned out fine. None of those kids who read It at that age started killing children in rural Maine while dressed as a clown. I’m sure most teens who read Nevernight won’t immediately start smoking cigarillos and run off to join an assassin school, either. Calm the fuck down.

Also, you should watch Black Books. 

Back to the review - if this can even be considered a “review” anymore - if I have any complaints about the Nevernight Chronicle it has mostly to do with the world itself. How are there still colors? How can you have color in a world with three - three! - suns? How does everything not immediately become sun-bleached? I mean, with three suns there must be a massive amount of high energy photons pouring down from the sky all the damn time, and eventually violet and ultraviolet light will disrupt chromophore bonds and, well, bleaching anything of color. I mean, American flags on the moon turned into white rectangles pretty quick (before being destroyed by time and being on the moon, of course) and I’ve had to learn the hard way not to shelve books in front of my window, even though there’s shelf space right below said window and it looks real nice and oh shit what happened to all these books’ covers??

Luke Skywalker should be careful staring at those two suns.

Also, how would anyone still have milk pale skin in a world with three suns? Wouldn’t everyone’s skin be much darker? I mean, for all the time Mia spends out under the suns without a hat, she should have freckles. Or melanoma. In fact, everyone in Itreya should have melanoma. And white hair. My hair turns several shades lighter every summer. How can Mia have black hair? Also, having black hair in a world with three suns sounds super uncomfortable. Three suns? Jesus, I’m super pale and have a hard enough time under the one. I’ve got seasonal freckles. Seriously, they appear during the Summer then fade away in the Fall. I got sunburned just reading about Itreya’s three suns. Granted, I was reading the books while outside, sitting under a tree and then the tree’s shadow moved with the sun and I didn’t...

And! AND! How would anyone be able to see? How would you even survive being exposed to that much sunlight? How can albinos like Adonai and Marielle even exist in a world with three suns???

See, this is what happens when I start thinking of things in terms of science when I should just be like “you know what, it’s a story, I’m just going to sit back and enjoy it.”

Also, who am I kidding, Library Science isn’t a real science.

RECOMMENDED FOR: fans of violent, foul-mouthed teenage assassins who solve their problems by stabbing them; people who don’t mind a bit of gore followed by some smut followed by snark followed by more gore.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: If you don’t fall into any categories mentioned in the “recommended for” you should probably read something else.

OVERALL SERIES RATING: 4.5/5 (minus .5 for all those times you get your heart ripped out)

DARKDAWN U.S. RELEASE DATE: September 3, 2019

VERY ACCURATE MIA CORVERE GIF: 

CAT RATING:

* Ahahahaha no one reads this blog, I’m kidding myself.

**All those bitching about the use of footnotes in the Nevernight Chronicle should check out Susanna Clarke’s amazing Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. She has footnotes that go on for entire pages. She has entire plotlines living in those footnotes! The footnotes in Strange and Norrell make Nevernight’s footnotes look like citations in a high school book report. 

Also, if you don’t like the footnotes, go with the audiobook. The narrator (Holter Graham) manages to blend the footnotes into the narration in a way that kind of freaked me out at first because I just started listening to the audio, and didn’t realize the books even had footnotes. This is what I get for not even bothering to flip through a physical copy of the books before starting the audiobook at work***

***Inappropriate places to listen to the Nevernight audiobook: work. Especially during the scenes featuring sexytimes. I was wearing headphones, but still!

[mamusiq]

7 Insane Ways Music Affects The Body (According to Science)

By Anthony Jurado

The world is chock full of ear hurt that some people willingly refer to as music. The Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, Conway Twitty; they all produce high quality records and 8-tracks for our enjoyment whether we like it or not. But music--even terrible music--has a stunning amount of power over our bodies. For instance science says music can... 7 Repair Brain Damage Slapping neuroscience right across the face, music is able to take stroke, lesion or other brain-damaged patients who have lost the partial ability to see or speak and return it to them. The Kenny Rogers Effect--not named because it deals with gorging yourself on chicken or replacing your old, grandfatherly face with a shiny new rubber one--takes patients with visual neglect, the inability to recognize half of what they see, and lightens the effects of the damage. Patients who only shave half their face or grab for the right boob at a strip club can now put that dollar bill in the left or right side of her thong. The Gambler never stops being awesome. Patients with left-side brain damage who can no longer speak can find they are able to sing words, often without trouble or training. After that, it's just a matter of time before they're able to speak simple sentences with practice. That may not sound like much, but if you've ever tried to order a side of fries with left-hand only charades you'll understand what a blessing this can be. How Does it Work? Melodic intonation therapy, or singing until you can talk, takes advantage of the fact that language functions are located in the left brain, but music lives over on the right side of the brain. So, when that asshole stroke robs you of your ability to speak, you can train your brain to move those functions to the other side by associating music with language. This essentially rewires a lifetime of growth and an entire history of evolution into meaninglessness interpretations of random head noises from a guy who hasn't shaved his beard since the 70s. Listening to actual non-terrible music has an additional effect, since pleasurable music releases dopamine that simply makes certain parts of your brain function better (particularly if they were damaged before). Dopamine is your brain's natural crack In a nutshell, music gives your brain a massage and fills it with happy chemicals, turning you from a one-eyed mute into an Island in the Stream. 6 Kick an Addiction As it turns out, performing music can be relaxing and can create a distraction from withdrawal symptoms; songwriting can help patients confront impulse control and self-deception and allows an output for negative emotions; hence the entire songbook of Raffi. It has even been found that listening to music can help aid the detox stage of recovery from drug addiction, and if applied frequently could cut down on the number of pain-killers patients need. Indeed, it turns out GWAR may be just as helpful as Percocet. How Does it Work? Music directly affects chemicals called neurotransmitters which relay information in our head. Drugs work in a similar way, except they make your brain lazy and convince it to stop making its own chemicals, because why do work when sweet China White is there to making everything all better? But when you stop taking drugs, your brain isn't making enough chemicals and it doesn't know why because it relies on those drugs to get enough, so your body fails to function correctly and you turn into Joaquin Phoenix. Introducing music can increase levels of some chemicals associated with heavy addictions, like dopamine and norepinephrine, but significantly cuts back on suzziness and the willingness to give blowjobs for your next fix. In addition, certain music lowers things like heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, etc., that make you feel like killing everybody around you. Apparently the fact that half of the world's rock stars still wind up dead from overdoses despite music's addiction-breaking qualities is a testament to just how much those guys fucking love doing drugs. 5 Boost Your Immune System It may come as no surprise to all the Cracked readers who are also neuroscientists that music helps boost your immune system. For the rest of you, word is that intangible plinking noises can create a noticeable increase in recovery from a wide range of conditions, including heart disease, lung ailments and even the common cold. While the field of study is still young compared to fancy "real medicine" like "pharmaceuticals" and "penis phrenology" it turns out that sometimes all you need to overcome your horribly debilitating illness is AC/DC. How Does it Work? Music, like Jurassic Park's raptors, doesn't just attack from one side. That shit brings out a multi-pronged assault. To start, music reduces stress by reducing cortisol levels, a chemical in your brain that causes you to feel stress in the first place. Jazz, bluegrass and soft rock have been found to be especially effective at reducing stress and increasing health because of their similar musical qualities (that quality being that you don't listen to any of them). If you're wondering if your favorite music is helping your health, a good question to ask is, "Does this music make me want to riot?" If you answered yes, it's not an optimal medicine. Likewise, if your favorite musician's last name is Cyrus you're probably dooming yourself to a life of erectile dysfunction and diabetes. In addition to simply lowering stress levels, music also raises immune markers in your system, creating more antibodies to fight disease. Ironically, listening to Amy Winehouse could make you immune to all the potential diseases you'd be exposed to if you met Amy Winehouse. This effect is compounding: Over time, the body can learn to recognize certain types of music (particularly choir or classical music) as immune boosting, continuing the improvement of the immune system. As an added bonus, if you listen to choir music on a regular basis you're almost guaranteed to be immune to STDs as the odds of you ever having sex are quite slim. 4 Prevent Seizures Good news: If you're not one of those 150 suckers who get seizures from music, you may be one of the luckier ones who benefit from decreased seizure activity as a result of listening to music. This effect has even been observed in coma patients. Bet you feel better about being in a coma now. It's been shown that music by Mozart played on the piano reduces seizure-causing activity in the brain within five minutes of exposure, with many cases showing immediate results in what scientists should called Seizure Wolfgang-banging. Experimentation with other forms of music has been minimal, but for some reason there appears to be a connection between our brains and piano music. How Does it Work? It's theorized that "the superorganization of the cerebral cortex . . . may resonate with the superior architecture of Mozart's music" which is a sciencey way of saying that probably Mozart gets all up in your brain in ways the Hamburger Helper jingle only wishes it could. Really though, this is another one of those medical shrug moments, as scientists really haven't figured it out yet. Kind of unfulfilling, isn't it? "Mozart music hits a certain part of... There's a connection between the structure and a brain's... You see, with brain music... Oh fuck you, it just works OK?" 3 Return Lost Memories If you want music to help you but refuse to stop smoking pot, perhaps you can at least remember where you put your car keys. Or, more applicably, if you have Alzheimer's it could help you remember pieces of your past. Medical practitioners have found that music shows the potential to unearth memories associated with music for patients, even ones in late stages of dementia. So if you had your first kiss to the dulcet tones of Jefferson Starship, their terrible, terrible music could bring that memory right back for you. How Does it Work? Listening to music engages many areas of the brain in both hemispheres, which is why it can create brain activity other methods, like conversation, can't. Another area it engages is the hippocampus, which would be a hilarious name for a school for aquatic mammals but in reality is the less impressive region of the brain which handles long-term memory storage. When you listen to music you know, feelings associated with the song are returned by the hippocampus. Sometimes the memories even manage to come along with the relevant feelings, so hopefully no music was playing the first time anyone ever kicked you in the junk. Even if memories aren't recovered, emotions and attitudes are, allowing people who can't even remember who they are from day to day or why they loathe the FOX network so much to at least laugh and sing along with off key hopefuls on American Idol. 2 Increase Spatial Reasoning If only there were some way to make yourself seem smarter without working. Oh, wait, there is. Mozart music, especially piano music, can raise your spatial reasoning the equivalent of nine IQ points. And that's an average, meaning there are people who get even more of a boost from it. That's over half a standard deviation or the difference between being Leonardo DiCaprio in What's Eating Gilbert Grape or Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. Sure, you're not winning a Nobel Prize either way, but it's still a noticeable difference. How Does it Work? There are a lot of theories, but some claim that Mozart's music focuses the listener more, like how if you're in the midst of your sixth hour of questing in World of Warcraft you can still rain holy hell down on Hogger as long as you're listening to Ace of Spades. Others say it increases activity in crucial regions of the brain and a few industrious types say "who cares why it works, how can we make money off of this?" 1 Cure Parkinson's At this point, you may be asking, "Sure, music can fix my brain, but can it fix my body?" which would indicate you expect entirely too much from iTunes. No amount of power ballads is going to cure your heartburn or trim a few pounds off anyone's overly-gelatinous ass. However, if you have Parkinson's disease, it just might be able to help. Victims of Parkinson's suffer from muscle spasms, locking muscles, balance problems and sketchy scientists with kick ass time machines. As it turns out, applying music can instantly resolve the physical issues of Parkinson's in many victims. Take Rande Gedaliah, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2003 and found she had muscle spasms, balance problems and difficulty walking. The disease eventually led to a serious fall in the shower. Things were looking pretty grim until one day she found out she could listen to music and suddenly be able to move with ease, the type of music determining the speed she walks at. We Are the Champions let her walk a slow clip and Born in the USA made her move faster still. Anything by Nickelback sent her spiraling into a rage. Ancient warriors listened to their Nickelback equivalent, thrashing and scraping bones on rocks, to produce a similar effect before combat. How Does it Work? When you're locked in your room, listening to your old N'Sync CDs, have you ever noticed your foot tapping on its own? That's not just because you have terrible taste in music. It's because the portions of the brain which deal with rhythm and movement are so automated that it requires no conscious attention to move to a beat. It's like your brain going behind your back to get things done because it knows it can't rely on you to bust an appropriate move when you hear "Bye Bye Bye." This movement isn't handled by the same process as walking up the stairs or hilariously farting with your armpit. Suddenly, patients with bradykinesia--an inability to initiate movement--can move instantly as their brain interprets the music and sends movement signals to their legs, essentially tricking their bodies into moving. We'll say that again for you: Music can trick your broken, unresponsive body into obedience. Think about it: How many times have you thrown your hands in the air? When that happened, did you just not care? Science says that's because you had no control. Music also helps other Parkinson's-related issues, including loss of balance and spasms. It's also been found that playing music creates an improvement in people with the disease, and drum circles are being used as treatment in music therapy groups, presumably because drums are cheaper than fancy-ass medical equipment, anyway.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18405_7-insane-ways-music-affects-body-according-to-science.html

[niamsuggitt]

The Ides Of June 2017

Hello there! And welcome all to this month’s ‘The Ides Of’ column, where I write just a little bit about all of the various stuff and nonsense I’ve been enjoying over the past 30 days. Yes, this instalment is late, but it’s been lovely and warm, so I haven’t had the inclination to stay indoors and write this stuff. I’ve actually been outside and I’ve even been wearing shorts! What is the world coming to?

This month is a decent one I think, there’s a lot of movies (although some are rewatches), 2 intriguing books, more great TV and I bought another Switch game! Unfortunately there’s no new music this time out, but next month will change that, with new Royal Blood and Public Service Broadcasting albums on the horizon.

So let’s do it to it!

—

Movies

Lot’s of movies to talk about this time, so let’s not waste any time with preamble! First up is Prometheus (Ridley Scott 2012), which I finally actually got around to watching due to the release of it’s sequel, Alien: Covenant, which I haven’t actually seen. That’s kind of me in a nutshell really, the release of a new thing makes me realise I haven’t actually seen the old thing yet! See also Schmidt, Kimmy later on. Anyway, I mostly enjoyed Prometheus, although as the rest of the internet has already explained ad nauseum, it certainly has it’s problems and, at a bit of a remove, doesn’t really make that much sense. I like the previous Alien films, and have the Quadrilogy box-set, but wouldn’t say I was any kind of mega-fan, so I don’t have any real issues per se with Scott going back and removing some of the mystery. Especially because, every answer he gives only raises more and more questions! I came out of the film wanting to know more, so in that way, it was a success. I think the things that really stood out to me here were the visuals, because whatever you think of Ridley Scott, the man has one of the best eyes for science fiction out there, and also the fantastic performance of Michael Fassbender as the android, David. He is just superb, although his role in the plot is one that frustrates me, as it’s never really explained why David is fucking with things, he just… is. Maybe the answers are waiting for me in Covenant? I also found that frustration with Charlize Theron’s character. She’s just kind of a dick for no reason, you find out Weyland is her dad… and then she dies. There must be more to it than that, but there isn’t. A lot of the other performances are like that really, good actors doing something potentially good, but not as much as you like, Idris Elba, Race Spall and Sean Harris all deserve more I think. Especially as Noomi Rapace, who is nominally the lead, isn’t quite as interesting, at least to me. Her performance is good, particularly in the fantastic ‘abortion’ scene that’s probably the film’s highlight. Unfortunately for Rapace, in an Alien film, a female lead is always going to be compared to Sigourney Weaver, and she doesn’t quite match up! Prometheus is, I would say, not a particularly great film, but it is a very interesting one.

Next, I watched a documentary that actually uses footage from Prometheus in parts, Jodorowsky’s Dune (Frank Pavich 2013). This film tells the inside story of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ novel into a movie in the 1970s, and wow, this movie that never got made is far more interesting than most ones that do make it! Jodorowsky’s ambition here was huge, and I would go as far to say a bit insane. If you’ve seen any of his actual films (I really like El Topo), you’ll know that he’s a bit out there, but this would have been something else. He wanted Salvador Dali, Orson Welles and Mick Jagger in the film, he made his young son learn to swordfight, it is mental. The film features some fascinating interview snippets not just with Jodorowsky and others who worked on the film, but also with outsiders like Nicolas Winding Refn, who once sat with Jodorowsky all night whilst he acted out the film. In the end, this is not just an intriguing look at a film that never came to be, but also a great monument to the power of creativity, and a unique creative mind. Because even in failure, Dune had a massive impact. It brought Jodorowsky together with Moebius, and they would later collaborate on the Incal comic series. It had a huge influence in so much other science fiction, including Alien (Dan O’Bannon and HR Giger worked on Dune, and some of the structures in Promethus are straight from the Dune sketchbook), Flash Gordon, Star Wars and basically… everything we nerds love today. My only complaint would be that, a lot of the interviews were in French, and there were no subtitles, so I couldn’t grasp what Michel Seydoux was saying. But other than that, highly recommended.

I wrote earlier about a Michael Fassbender performance being the best part of a movie, and whilst that’s true for Prometheus, it’s definitely the case for X-Men: Apocalypse (Bryan Singer 2016), which I found to be really quite a mess, and definitely indicative of how far behind the X-Men film franchise is lagging behind others right now (please note, I haven’t seen Logan yet). As a comics fan, I of course love the X-Men, but I must admit that I haven’t really been behind the X-Men movies in a while. X3 was the last one I saw in the cinema, and Deadpool and First Class are probably the ones I would actually say were good movies these days. I haven’t watched 1 or 2 in ages, but I fear they won’t have aged well. Apocalypse is indicative of this malaise really. The plot is incredibly perfunctory, with Apocalypse just coming back, being evil, and the X-Men stopping him. There’s barely a hint of a plan from him, which is incredibly disappointing, especially as it means the normally brilliant Oscar Isaac is just wasted under layers of Ivan Ooze make-up. The rest of the cast is actually good, I mentioned him earlier, but Fassbender is just superb as Magneto. He and James McAvoy’s Professor X basically make this period piece series work singlehandedly. I initially rolled my eyes at the film manipulating our emotions by giving Magneto a family only to immediately kill them off, but damn, Fassbender sells it. Jennifer Lawrence is once again inexplicably front and centre as Mystique. I really find it weird how they’ve insisted on making her such a big hero, obviously it caught them off-guard after First Class how big a star she became, but it just doesn’t make sense to me, especially when compared the the comics. The film re-introduces a lot of familiar faces with new actors, so we now have a teen Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler and Storm. These young actors are fine, but they aren’t given too much to do really. It pissed me off how the film has Storm side with Apocalypse for most of it and then switch sides and tries to plays it off as a big surprise. Storm one of the most famous X-Men of all of them, everyone knows she’s a good guy, you can’t get away with silly shit like that. This film just felt a bit flat and uninspired throughout, there’s an entirely unnecessary Wolverine cameo (that I actually managed to be surprised by), a decent enough Quicksilver sequence that just feels like a poor re-tread of the one in Days Of Future Past, and just a whole heap of bad CGI and lame moments. I liked parts of it, but it in no way stands up to the MCU, and isn’t even aggressively stupid bad like Suicide Squad. I really hope the X-Men movies can improve, I know that Logan is supposed to be good, and the Legion TV show was amazing, but there needs to be another good, main franchise X-Movie. Will Dark Phoenix manage that? I have my doubts. Maybe New Mutants will be good.

Speaking of New Mutants, the future Magik, Anya Taylor-Joy, is the star of the next film on the docket, The Witch (Robert Eggers 2015). This is a very atmospheric and creepy horror film set in 17th Century America, as an isolated Puritan Family comes face to face with, well, a witch. This is my kind of horror movie, not so much made up of jump scares and gore, but instead an overall unease about it, and slow ramping up of terror until everything boils over into weirdness and a talking demon goat. There are some truly unsettling sequences in this story, and it really did keep me guessing throughout as to what was going on. One thing I really appreciated was the script, as Eggers tried to make it as period accurate as possible. At first the language seems odd, but you soon get used to it. The performances are all strong, Taylor-Joy is excellent as Thomasin, and it was great to see Leeds’ own Ralph Ineson get a starring role after being excellent on so many TV shows throughout the years. And what can you even say about  Black Phillip? A tour-de-force from that Goat. The Witch is really strong film, but it is genuinely scary, it took me about 3 months to build up the courage to watch it, and it has stuck with me!

I continued the horror by watching The Babadook (Jennifer Kent 2014), and yes, I was inspired to watch it because of the ‘Babadook as a gay icon’ meme, which is just hilarious. I didn’t find that much queer subtext in the film (although he does come out of a closet…) but I did very much enjoy it. Like The Witch, this film delivers the kind of scares I like, psychological, and lingering in the background, and most importantly, rooted in real human emotions. The Babadook might not even be real, and is probably some kind of grief manifestation. But, again, like The Witch, I enjoy the ambiguity about it. Another thing I really liked is how willing the film was to make the kid into an unlikeable dick, whilst also still allowing us to care about him. The two main characters here a very complex, and there’s a lot to unpack still. The design of the Babadook is another really cool thing about this film, it’s just iconic (gay or otherwise) and I think this character could end up in the pantheon of great monsters, it really is that effectively creepy.

I also re-watched 2 big blockbusters on Blu-Ray that I wrote about more extensively when they were in the cinema; Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson 2016) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Gareth Edwards 2016), or as I like to call them ‘Mads Mikkelson does Disney’. Both held up on a second viewing, and I think I actually liked Doctor Strange more this time around. The visuals were amazing, and, along with Guardians Of The Galaxy 2, show that they really are willing to take the Marvel Cinematic Universe into different places. Rogue One’s tragic ending didn’t quite hit me as much this time out for obvious reasons, as I knew it was coming, but I still enjoyed it. I paid more attention to the performances, in particular Diego Luna and Ben Mendelsohn. I think Cassian Andor might be one of the most interesting characters in a Star Wars movie, I certainly would like to see more of his story, so get on it Marvel!

Television

There’s no new or returning shows this month, it’s all quick hits, and I will try and be quick!

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (FOX) wrapped up it’s season in fine form with a bunch of double-episodes. I really enjoyed Gina Gershon’s guest role, and the way the season ended, with Rosa and Jake being sent to prison was a great cliffhanger, even topping last years! As an Earwolf podcast nerd, it was of course also great to get cameos from Scott Aukerman, Kulap Vilaysack in the finale. I get a kick out of hearing those familiar voices come out of actual faces. This is now one of the most consistently funny US sitcoms out there… hell, it’s one of the few.

The ending of Better Call Saul (AMC) Season 3 was also very good, particularly the fate of Chuck, which was just shocking and tragic. When BCS is on, it’s the best drama on TV, and it certainly has the best characters. I will say though that this 3rd season has been a bit too disjointed, as those characters were too disparate. I can’t remember the last time Jimmy and Mike shared a scene (Episode 4?) and the same can really be said for Mike and Nacho. At times it felt like 2 different shows, maybe even 3, happening concurrently. Now, all of those shows were good, but it didn’t cohere as well as it might. Hopefully Season 4 will bring things closer together. Gus’ knowing look at the end seems to indicate he knows what Nacho was up to, so I can imagine the criminal element consolidating. Plus, with Chuck dead and Kim sidelined with injury, things are bound to change for Jimmy McGill, and I imagine we’re only going to get more and more of Saul Goodman. This was an odd year for the show, but it’s still excellent, and Michael McKean really should win all the awards, he was superb throughout this season, making us loathe and sympathise with Chuck all at the same time. Any awards that don't go to him should go to Odenkirk of course.

I’m basically just going to be talking about finales this month aren’t? Archer (FXX) ended it’s ‘Dreamland’ storyline with some seriously surprising violence, I couldn’t believe how far they actually took Barry’s rampage. In the end, I thought the concept of Archer being in this Noir fever dream petered out a bit, and they didn’t stick the landing. But it was still funny, with all of the voice actors on full cylinders. I do think that it might be time to end Archer though, they’ve stretched this tone and character as far as it can go. After a whole season that’s a dream, what next? Take a leaf out of the LOST podcast joke and do a zombie season?

Gotham (FOX) got even more silly and ridiculous at the end of Season 3, with the introduction of Ra’s Al Ghul and the revelation that long-time henchman extraordinaire is Butch Gilzean is actually called Cyrus Gold, and is therefore eventually going to become Solomon Grundy. As dumb as this is, I loved it. This show is best when it verges on the camp, and these last few episodes delivered, particularly as Morena Baccarin finally got to be a bit interesting when playing an ‘evil’ Leslie Tompkins. It was great fun seeing her chew the scenery. And man, that final scene, where Bruce Wayne goes out on the streets to fight crime… it’s mad that they are doing that so soon, but I don’t care at this point. Gotham needs to go full on Adam West (RIP by the way) and never look back.

I must admit to being rather disappointed by the finale of The Flash (The CW), because the fake out of it actually being HR to die instead of Iris felt way too easy, and also because HR was just the best. I’ll miss him, but I’m sure whatever the hell version of Wells Tom Cavanaugh plays in Season 4 will also be great. The real highlight of this last set of episodes was the return of Captain Cold in ‘Infantino Street’. I can’t say it enough, but Wentworth Miller is just the best in that role. The ending of the Season redeemed things for me somewhat though, with Barry disappearing into the Speed Force, in what I think is meant to be the show’s version of his ‘death’ in Crisis On Infinite Earths (a story I have actually never read). How cool would it be if Wally was the Flash for like, half of Season 4? I would dig that. But it won’t happen.

Rounding out Superhero Corner until The Defenders comes out in the summer, Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC) had a great finale to a really strong season. It’s brilliant to see how far this show has come. They managed to tie all of the separate ‘pods’ of the season together, as Ghost Rider returned to help take out Aida in a very satisfying way. I really hope they keep this up in Season 5.

Like with Better Call Saul, it really has been an odd year for The Americans (FX), as the series shifted gears and became much more of an introspective character piece, particularly when it comes to the character of Philip. It took a while to get used to, and by the finale I was still a bit let down by how little ‘happened’, but in the end, I like where we are now. The characters, who were already well rounded, are even deeper now, and things are set up for a fascinating final season. And when you think about it, these smaller stories actually show the impact of Philip and Elizabeth’s job better than big missions. That slow grind, that loss of humanity, as driving a teenage boy to attempted suicide becomes the aim of a mission. It’s the more human side, rather than just chess pieces. And that’s really what I think The Americans is about, seeing what the Cold War was like on the ground. Let’s hope that Season 6 can marry what was good about Season 5 with the previous 4, and we really do go out with a bang. You can rest assured the acting will be fantastic, because Rhys and Russell always are.

Now for some shows that I haven’t watched the end of yet! American Gods (Starz) is still rolling along very nicely indeed, and even though as I said, I don’t really remember the book all too well, it’s adapting the story well, and even in some places improving on it. What I’ve found interesting is that, in a season of only 8 episodes, they’ve had the confidence to do 2 whole episodes that didn’t feature the 2 main characters of Shadow and Wednesday at all. One of those was all about Laura Moon coming back to life, and the other told the back-story of Mad Sweeney and Essie. Both were fantastic, and that willingness to switch things up really impressed me. The visuals of this show continue to be superb, and I am excited for the finale. It’s sitting there waiting for me right now…

iZombie (The CW) is rocketing towards it’s finale by piling on storyline after storyline and mashing them all together. At times it’s felt a bit over-stuffed, what with Blaine, Harley Johns, Stacey Boss, the conspiracy about the guy committing suicide in his cell, investigating Wally’s murder and the Mayoral Election, but mostly I think it’s worked. The most recent episode in particular did a good job a streamlining things I think and the ending was great, the world now knows zombies exist? What the? The performance of Rose McIver continues to be superb, and I loved the conceit of having her, Blaine and Don E all on the same brain at the same time, it’s awesome how they can still switch things up. I’m also enjoying the arrival of Logan Echolls himself, Jason Dohring. Can we dare hope for a Kristen Bell appearance?

Silicon Valley (HBO) is still delivering consistently strong laughs and intriguing twists and turns. I think my favourite part of this run of episodes has been Haley Joel Osment as Keenan Feldspar, he’s just really funny. I am worried about the finale now that we know that T.J. Miller is leaving the show, I don’t know how they are going to write out Ehrlich, but I don’t want them to! Hopefully Bighead will return to fill the void. I swear, he hasn’t been in like, the last 5 episodes or something.

Veep (HBO) has kicked it up a notch towards the end of Season 6, as a lot of chickens came home to roost, and Selina Meyer’s secrets were leaked to the world. It was a great episode, and was a strong use of continuity. I do still think this show has gotten a bit too broad when compared to the Iannucci years, but it is still very funny and the level of profanity and meanness still at times truly shocking. I can’t wait to see how the finale up-ends things. Selina is in a good place right now with the world finally knowing that she freed Tibet, but that can’t last, we all know it.

And finally, inspired by the start of it’s third season, I finally got around to finishing off Season 2 of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix). I did the same thing with Season 1, and will probably do the same thing with this new season. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Anyway, this was another very funny, surprisingly dark season of what is a fantastic show. I loved Tina Fey’s role as Kimmy’s therapist, and the casting of Kimmy’s mother was brilliant. I also found the romance between Titus and Mikey to be surprisingly sweet, but mainly because Titus is one of the best characters on television. My only complaint would be not enough Jon Hamm, but given that cliffhanger, I’m sure that will change!

Music

As I said in the intro, no new music this month so I won’t be able to contribute to any ‘Song Of The Summer’ debate just yet. Although that’s not actually a thing and we all know it.

Books

2 books to talk about this month, and both of them are from writers linked to my one true passion, comics. First up is Norse Mythology (2017) by Neil Gaiman, which as the title would suggest, is a re-telling of the Norse myths from Gaiman. It’s pretty cool to read his take on the direct myths, as these characters have popped up throughout his work. Whether in Sandman or American Gods, Gaiman has put his stamp on the likes of Odin and Loki, and it’s interesting to see him interpret the original stories. Like Gaiman, I first encountered the Norse Gods in the pages of Marvel Comics, and whilst these versions are therefore familiar, there’s something different about them, something darker for sure. This felt like a faithful, albeit poetic adaptation of the stories, as most of them were ones I knew, whether from the comics (if you’ve never read Matt Fraction and Patrick Zircher’s series of Thor one-shots that re-tell the myths you need to rectify that) or from previous takes on the myths or even just cultural osmosis. All of the familiar Gods appear, and you get stories like when Thor dressed as a woman to kill a Frost Giant, or the old beggar who built Asgard in a year. One thing I liked is that Gaiman really gets across how these stories are part of an oral tradition, and not all of them survive, so you get intentional continuity errors and characters just disappearing. It’s clear that there were other myths back then, but not all of them have survived to today. The short chapter length means that this book would probably actually be perfect for reading aloud, and I may even listen to the audiobook if Gaiman is reading it himself. He has a fantastic voice for audiobooks, it’s how I read The Graveyard Book for the first time. One other advantage this re-telling has over the comics is that Gaiman is able to actually reach ‘Ragnarok’, the death of the Gods, and go through with it. In the Marvel Universe, even though Ragnarok has happened (a couple of times in fact) and Thor has died or been replaced even more, you still know that nothing will change, but not in this case. All of the Gods, particularly Balder and Loki, meet their eventual tragic ends. This is a very enjoyable read, especially for someone who, like me, has an interest in myths and legends. It’s clear that Gaiman has a lot of affection for these Gods (particularly Loki, who is wonderfully complex here) and stories, and he more than does them justice. I would certainly be interesting in seeing Gaiman tackle other Pantheons, I personally like Greek Myth the best, but would like to know more about Egyptian as well.

I’m currently just under half-way through Michael Chabon’s Moonglow (2016) and am very much enjoying it. This novel is styled as a memoir and sees Chabon detail the life of his grandparents, particularly his grandfather. Jumping back and forth throughout his life, Chabon allows us to see what his grandfather was like as a child, as a soldier in WW2, as a newlywed, and and as an old man. So far it’s a fascinating book, both in terms of how Chabon details the complex characters of both grandparents, and also in how he tackles the hazy nature of memory and truth. It’s never clear just how much of the book is actually true, the characters are never actually named (it’s just ‘my grandfather’ or ‘my mother’) so it could all be 100% fiction. I tend to lean into it mostly being true, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter does it? As is usual with Chabon, the writing here is very strong, with some very beautiful sentences and moments. The fact that we know that the central characters here die at the very outset makes everything, particularly the romance, bittersweet, and Chabon nails that. It’s interesting, but the book I keep comparing this to is Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. Both books are about V2 rockets in WW2, but one is a weird, sprawling epic, whereas the other is an intimate character piece. It just shows how different writers can approach the same topic in completely differing ways. I don’t think Moonglow is quite as good as Kavalier and Clay, but what is? It’s still a very good book and I am excited to read the rest of it.

Games

After going months, nay, years, with no games section, I now have 2 games to write about! You wait for a bus…

Anyway, along with Zelda, I’ve now also bought Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Nintendo Switch 2017) and whilst I haven’t played it a whole lot, is a whole lot of fun, because, well, it’s Mario Kart! Those games are always fun, the more things change, the more things stay the same. They may have added a boat-load of new characters (including Link, which is weird) and added a bunch of bells and whistles and para-gliders onto the Karts, but it’s basically the same game I’ve been playing since the N64, a mad-cap race on some insane courses. I haven’t played every track yet, but I’m getting there. One thing I really appreciate about this particular version is that you can use a single Switch Joycon as a controller, so I didn’t need to shell (heh) out £60 for another controller in order to play multiplayer. I’ve always enjoyed playing against someone else who’s actually in the room over online, so that’s a huge plus, not just for Mario Kart but for the Switch in general if future games follow suit. Mario Kart is hard to really talk about critically because it’s so pure at what it is, but I do love it. And who do I play as you ask? Yoshi of course, always Yoshi. Although sometimes Toad.

As for The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild (Nintendo Switch 2017) I’ve spent most of my recent time trying in vain to capture and train horses. I’ve really been embracing the freedom the game provides to do things in whatever order I want. I haven’t even gone to Kakariko Village yet! I’m probably a bad player, but I don’t mind, I’m having a lot of fun and the game is still as beautiful and clever as ever. There’s a real romance to this game, I find it an emotional and exhilarating experience to play.

—

So that’s your lot, hope you enjoyed it. I’ll be back in about a month with some more. It’s summer, so expect there to be a lot less TV and maybe just a whole lot less of everything if this weather keeps up! Although you can take Switches outside…